Wines of the Touraine
If you are in the Touraine region of the Loire Valley (the city of Tours being roughly in the center of the region), looking for things to do, the natives will tell you about a handful of chateaux. Each one will tell you a different set. If you mention that you are looking for things to do focused around food and wine, you will still get a list of popular chateaux. You can not avoid them in the region, each one the summer residence of this or that noble, each one enjoying at least one historically significant episode in its history.
So Melissa and I saw a lot of chateaux. But conveniently, the route between many of the more famous chateaux is also the Route des Vignobles, a long twisty path which tries to steer you by as many wine makers as possible. Each wine maker along the route (and there are zillions of them), is indicated by a single sign. If you're lucky, this points straight at their driveway. If you're not lucky, it points to a road that wends up and down through some village, and, most frustratingly, to forks in the road. Like I said, each wine maker gets one sign.
Still, Melissa and I managed to visit a good number of wine makers and learn something about the various wines of this part of the Loire. What is astonishing about the Loire is the vast array of different wines which are produced. The Touraine region contains a number of appelations. In most if not all of them, there are only two grapes used: Chenin Blanc for whites, Cabernet Franc for reds. From this meager selection, Loire wine makers produce whites at all level of sweetness, sparkling wines as well as still, rosés, and both fruity, nice reds and powerhouse reds that you'll want to cellar.
One of the most wonderful things about Loire wines, in my opinion, is the commitment to expressing the terroir of the various regions. You won't find wines that have been elaborately sculpted by the wine maker to appeal to the international market; most aging takes place in stainless steel, with oak only being used for those wines that are meant to be laid down for a decade or so before you enjoy them.
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While Melissa and I visited perhaps an octet of wine makers, two in particular stood out. The first one was Domaine Charles Joguet, which produces wines in the Chinon appelation. Domaine Charles Joguet (which is no longer owned by Charles Joguet but his protegé Alain Delaunay) is one of the greats of the region. My Encyclopedia of Wine mentions them, and the Guide Hachette says (roughly; it's in French) that the winery has a good-size and loyal fan base, and gives their Clos de la Dioterie a single star (they've taken their cue from the Michelin guide; inclusion itself is something of an honor, and above that rankings go from 0 to 3 stars). We knew about them because in the wine class Melissa took, her teacher called these wines out as particularly good when they covered the Loire.
I should mention that Alain, who led us through our tasting, was kind enough to give us a "wedding gift", not letting us pay for the three bottles we had chosen. But I should further add that we would have bought the wines anyway. We tasted nine wines, and for each one Alain told us about the vineyard which produced it, trying to convey the difference in the landscape around us. This was all done in French, however, so I caught the gist but not the specifics so well.
The wines all had a tremendous flavor, and the three high-end wines we tasted definitely exhibited their oak still, but it was the first time I've tried an oaky, tannic wine where I could really detect the fruit underneath, waiting to burble up in a decade or so. Indeed, we tried an '89 Clos de la Dioterie immediately after the 2001, and the difference was remarkable. The '89 had mellowed and smoothed out into an elegant wine (Alain also pointed out that '89 was a great year) with wonderful balance. The wines we bought, or intended to buy, were two bottles of a simple, fruity white and a bottle of his rosé (which we had drunk the night before at a Michelin 1-star in the area). The rationale was that with our tiny luggage space (shipping wine being very expensive), we wanted the bottles we couldn't buy in the States. Kermit Lynch in Berkeley imports virtually all of Charles Joguet's wines. I highly recommend giving some a try; most of his wines can be drunk young, and the higher-end wines have a lot of capability for being a particularly delicious treat a number of years after their release.
The other winery of note, Vigneau-Chevreau, is in the Vouvray appelation (which you drive through on your way to Chenonceaux). The most notable aspect (though their wines were quite good) was the fact that they use the méthode biodynamique for growing their grapes. This is a peculiar growing philosophy which is perhaps most popular in the Loire valley, though it is used elsewhere. This is organic farming taken to a new extreme. Biodynamic growers often take into account astrology and they use "cures" of various kinds which smack of magic potions to my novice ears. Still, these wine makers feel that it gives the grape the best chance to express its terroir, and who can argue with the drive to show the grape in its purest, most distinctive form?
Edward Behr has talked about le bio, as this philosophy is called for short, extensively in his magazine, The Art of Eating, but it was interesting to hear from a wine maker directly (again, as best as possible, as the whole tour took place in French). It's a lot of work, as everything is done by hand, and you take a bigger risk, as you are more at the whims of Nature. And explicit demand for such wines is still tiny. One gets the sense that the wine making family at Vigneau-Chevreau, even more than farmers everywhere, works very hard and sees little financial reward. The psychological reward of making the best wine they know how, however, they have in abundance.
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