6/5/2023 0 Comments Loire valley wine mapsYou can also taste local whites which are made from the Chenin Blanc grape. For a true wine lover's experience why not stay the night in the middle of a working vineyard.in a massive wine barrel? Something a little more quirky exists a few more miles west in Cheverny. Expect to pay around 200 euros per night for a double room, and you won't get much change out of 350 euros if you upgrade to a deluxe double room with a castle view. You can stay on the grounds at the Relais de Chambord if you want to get as close as you can overnight. The sprawling woodland is also a game reserve that harks back to the young king who commissioned the palace, Francois I, himself a keen hunter. This fabulous edifice is surrounded by 13,000 acres of grounds, where you can cycle, hike or even hire a fishing station. More castles than grape varieties exist here, and a favourite has to be Chateau Chambord, a 16th Century former royal palace that strikingly epitomises the French renaissance. Nowhere in the world can you find a series of such spectacular examples of architecture, one beautiful example following only a matter of a few miles from the last. The wines from here are cheaper but are likely to also be expressive, particularly of the tropical elements of the grape.Īs the Loire winds itself west through dappled sunlight and willow-shade, so begins the cavalcade of chateaux. Both Pouilly-Fumé and Sancerre wines can be on the expensive side so my tip is to venture just outside the appellation to the village of Menetou-Salon. They are often fermented in stainless steel vats which does wonders to preserve freshness in a grape that is so expressive without the influence of oak. The soil is well-drained and chalky, and you can certainly detect that 'wet stone' smell when you dip your proboscis into a Sauvignon Blanc from these parts. Some less polite reviews have given the herbacious odour a likening closer to that of certain feline liquids, but wine can be very much an 'each to their own' activity. 'Zip' and 'zing' are thrown around in the tasting rooms and bars, while gooseberry is the aroma most commonly associated with Sauvignon Blanc from this part of the world. The wines are, by and large (if you'll pardon that extraordinary expression) dry with rather high acidity. The Loire brings heat and reflected light to the vineyards that follow its course, added natural ingredients that ensure the grapes can ripen, largely undamaged, even though we're north of the 47th parallel. It is unmistakeably so in this part of France. Bordeaux's muddy Gironde, the Riesling-inspiring Mosel, Australia's Margaret River, and Rioja's Ebro (almost as long as the Loire) have an effect on what's in your glass that is difficult to overestimate. In so many cases, if the climate is within the margins of feasibility, you will find a river at the heart of a wine region. It's around 500 kilometres from here to the mouth of the river as it meets the Atlantic Ocean, and in the other direction, it's another 500 kilometres to where the Loire rises all the way down in the Ardeche. Here in the Central Valley, you straddle the halfway point of the Loire, but it's just the beginning of Sauvignon Blanc country. Separated by only a few kilometres, these iconic wine towns almost face each other across France's longest river. You can taste the land, what the French call 'gout de terroir', and that is perhaps the greatest joy of wine travel. It is this chalky limestone that gives the valley's Sauvignon Blancs their mineral character. On a geological level, the area was part of the Paris Basin, a Triassic era seabed that encompassed not only the Central Loire but the Champagne region, reaching up as far as the famous chalky cliffs of Southern England. The secret to the world's finest Sauvignon Blanc lies in the soils of France's Loire Valley.
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