Public Question Asked by User170765 about Paris

Help with visiting the Southern French wine region

I am a tour operator/ tour guide in South Africa in a specialist niche market of wine and cuisine tourism. I am also a garagiste with 7 vintages of experience. We are planning to visit Southern France in June this year and need help with the following. We don’t know where to base ourselves but are looking for a small village in a wine region, maybe Provence, from which we can visit nearby regions by bicycle or Vespa. We are looking to rent a small, inexpensive cottage or apartment that is in a village or on a wine farm. We are not necessarily looking for a big name place, in fact a small friendly village with nice people, a food market, no Americans and some basic facilities would probably suit us fine. Our initial thought was to start at Nice as this is where there is a large airport but we are open to other suggestions regarding our starting point. Being close to Italy and/or nearby the ocean would be nice but not totally necessary