Latest news with #LoireValley
Irish Times
24-05-2025
- Irish Times
John Wilson: Loire white wines made for warm-weather drinking
As summer kicks in, I start to salivate for the fresh, light wines of the Loire Valley. The river Loire is the longest in France , more than 1,000km from start to finish. Vines flourish alongside a cornucopia of other fruit and vegetables. Recently I listened with envy to a friend who was about to head there by car and ferry to take in the fantastic castles, excellent local food and great wines. The Loire Valley is a fantastic source of white wines, with something to suit every taste, from racy aromatic sauvignon blanc and saline Muscadet to richer, complex, age-worthy chenin blanc. All, including the sweet wines, bring a lightness and freshness that seems to shout summer. There are red wines and rosés too, but today I focus on the whites. The Loire is the original home of sauvignon blanc and produces some of the finest examples, less exuberant than those from Marlborough, but every bit as good. The best-known names are Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé. Both are 100 per cent sauvignon, and these are some great wines, although better-value sauvignon can often be found in the nearby Quincy, Menetou-Salon, and the larger region of Touraine or the all-encompassing Val de Loire. I have always had a soft spot for Savennières, made from chenin blanc. It goes perfectly with poached salmon and hollandaise. Regulars will know that I am a big fan of Muscadet. Muscadet de Sèvre & Maine is superior to plain Muscadet. The best villages are entitled to use their own name, such as Clisson, Goulaine and Vallet. READ MORE Val de Loire Sauvignon Blanc 2023 Val de Loire Sauvignon Blanc 2023 11.5%, €9.49 Subtle aromas with soft pear fruits and a rounded finish. With summer salads or by itself. From Lidl Touraine Sauvignon Blanc 2023, Les Corbillières Domaine Barbou Touraine Sauvignon Blanc 2023, Les Corbillières Domaine Barbou 12.5%, €17.25 Clean citrus with plenty of satisfying plump green fruits and a nice richness. A great all-purpose summer wine, with or without food. Try it with a goat's cheese salad or crab cakes. From Wines Direct, Mullingar, Athlone and Clos Joubert Muscadet de Sèvre & Maine sur lie 2023 Domaine Haut-Févrie Clos Joubert Muscadet de Sèvre & Maine sur lie 2023 Domaine Haut-Févrie 12%, €24.50 Fresh cool clean green fruits, with a touch of spice and a fine mineral edge. The classic combination would be oysters or mussels, but it would also go with most seafood and summer salads. From Delgany Cottage, Greystones; Lilith, D7; BaRossa, D4 Savennières Champ de la Hutte, Château de Chamboureau 2022, Chenin Blanc, Organic Savennières Champ de la Hutte, Château de Chamboureau 2022, Chenin Blanc, Organic 12.5%, €27 Cool crystalline fruits with a lively acidity and a touch of honey. A wine that grows on you with every sip. Try it with poached or grilled salmon, prawn salad or some asparagus. From Whelehans,
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
A moment that changed me: I thought I'd never fit in in rural France – until a revelation at the boulangerie
I was standing in the long queue of a rural French boulangerie when it happened. The sun was just coming up and the glorious smell of freshly baked baguette filled the dawn air. I drank it in and shuffled forward, awaiting my turn, aware I was getting 'looks' – and it wasn't difficult to see why. I had driven all night from performing at a comedy gig in London to get to my home in the Loire valley, and I was still in my work clothes. My stage wear included a check tweed Edwardian frock coat with matching weskit, navy blue dress trousers, brogue monk shoes, a smart Oxford-collared shirt and a knitted blue tie, slightly loosened. Under normal circumstances, I would not invade my local boulangerie dressed as a cross between a late 60s dandy and a roaring 20s duellist, but it had been a long drive, and I was too tired to tone it down. Plus, I had never really fit in locally anyway. We had moved there about 10 years earlier, in 2005 – a catastrophic decision, according to my agent, but a happy one for me, my wife and our then four-year-old son; the pace of life was less frenetic and we felt less hemmed in. And, as I often said only half-jokingly, it was the closest place to London we could afford to buy a house. Things had gone pretty well: my wife, being half-French and fluent, was working locally as a teacher, and my son had picked up the language more quickly than I can change a car tyre. We had two more children and I was … well, I was doing OK. In truth, I was finding it hard. My French, at the time, was barely passable and spoken with a Michael Caine accent in what I have come to call 'frockney'. But that was only part of the problem. Although I desperately wanted to melt into the background, my Englishness felt painfully in contrast with the sheer Frenchness of the vine-growing, goat-farming bucolia where I now lived. No matter what I did, I always felt as if I stood out a mile. Initially I had seen my mod stagewear as a defence at comedy gigs, a suit of armour for the laconic performance. It was only as I became more experienced and my stage act began to more closely reflect my real personality that I realised it wasn't armour – it was me. I had seen how the locals regarded the second-home-owning Parisians who flock to the Loire valley at the weekends in their expensive 4x4s and their too-new wellington boots, and I felt in danger of being seen the same way: a diffident interloper, not one of us. In the end, I rarely went out. I became clumsily mute, dreading any interaction with neighbours and acquaintances. The social minefield of how many cheek kisses were acceptable left me a gibbering wreck. But standing in the boulangerie queue, looking like I'd just flown in from a Mod Weekender crossed with a Doctor Who convention, proved to be my salvation. Despite my exhaustion, my clothing gave me the kind of stage confidence I only usually had in front of a paying audience. I greeted everyone warmly, hearty 'bonjours' all around; I laughed off the cheek-kissing when I got it wrong, ordered my baguettes and croissants and strode out. I didn't realise it at the time, but I had made my mark. I became known locally as Monsieur So British – an affectionate moniker which, ironically, meant I started to feel more at home. Mods call it peacocking – dress up, feel good, parade – and, gradually, I started to do it more often. Part of the reason I'd been hiding away, I realised, was my own misguided stubbornness. Mod clothes are part of my identity and to dilute that look to fit in had felt wrong. So for much of the last decade, I had compromised my look, and peacocked indoors. Standing in line to order my baguette, I realised I needn't have bothered. The rural French, I have learned, rarely do formal wear themselves – but they do love to see the British dress up. I have since attended local funerals where only the undertakers and I have been wearing suits – though mine is high-collared, eight-buttoned, double-breasted, and my tie is never loosened. On Armistice Day, a public holiday here, with street parades, it's typically just me and those in uniform who abstain from casual attire. I wore a pair of two-tone, basket-weave loafers on one of these parades to the local cenotaph and a high-ranking officer from the local airbase said how pleased he was to see an Englishman joining the commemorations. 'How did you know I was English?' I asked in my frockney accent. He chuckled and pointed at my shoes. C'est La Vie by Ian Moore is out now (£7.99; Summersdale)
Telegraph
13-05-2025
- Telegraph
My cycling holiday in the Loire was a navigational nightmare
In the end, cycling up to 75km a day wasn't the problem. Not when you've got an electric bike doing most of the heavy lifting, and the Loire Valley is almost as flat as a crepe. Chateau hopping by bicycle proved much easier than expected for a 50-something who's never darkened the door of a spin class. No, the problem wasn't pedalling from one storybook castle to the next – it was finding them in the first place. It wouldn't have been an issue in the Renaissance, of course, when the horses could probably gallop blindfolded between the architecturally dazzling buildings peppered along the Loire. Centuries of French royalty lived, loved and loitered here. But my two-wheeled steed, due to take me on a three-day itinerary from Blois to Tours, was handed to me by the cycle hire outfit along with a rubbish app and a map only covering half the route. Google Maps wasn't going to cut it: I was on the Loire à Vélo, a 900km cycling network of mostly off-road routes and quiet country lanes marking its 20 th birthday this year. Nearly two million people pedal its paths annually, breezing along the riverbanks and meandering through vineyards and forests. Presumably, most of them don't get lost. The routes are signposted to a degree, often with just a route number and a cycling icon; sometimes you see them, sometimes you don't. But my second day's ride between the Château of Cheverny and Chaumont was marked more by wrong turns, making the 35km morning outing stretch to almost double its estimated time. The outlook for the afternoon was worse; neither map nor app extended beyond Chaumont. With no WiFi to download another app, I tried the tourist office for old-fashioned paper assistance. 'That's not our region,' the assistant shrugged with Gallic indifference. But let's park the navigational disasters for the moment; once you find them, the chateaux are truly magnifique. Day one had taken me to an estate the size of Paris at Chambord, topped with a riot of chimney stacks, stair turrets and dormer windows. It's less of a roof and more of a skyline in miniature. Leading up to it is an ingenious double-helix staircase ensuring that anyone ascending never meets those descending (handy for when your mistress is arriving as your wife is leaving). Further on, Cheverny looked the picture of stately elegance from the exterior, though that image wobbles slightly on discovering it was the model for Captain Haddock's Marlinspike Hall in the Tintin books. Inside, it's dripping with 17th-century tapestries, painted timber ceilings and wood panelling. Everything is so lavish, you could easily overlook the paintings by Titian and Raphael. While an English stately home might have a teashhaop outside the gates, here refreshments come courtesy of the Maison des Vins (the Loire is one of France's great wine-growing regions, after all). It's no ordinary tasting; place your glass under any of 130 nozzles on the side of enormous fake barrels, and out comes your selection. Try doing that at a National Trust café. It's much better value than you'll get in Blighty, too, at €7 for seven tastes. By the time I rolled up at the nearby Relais des Trois Chateaux, I was feeling distinctly mellow. My suitcase was already waiting (courtesy of the Loire a Velo transport scheme), while a soak in the bath soothed a bum numbed by a day in the saddle. During an excellent dinner (you eat well on this trip), I chatted to New Zealanders Catherine and David Davies-Colley, who had just started a three-week cycle tour. They'd booked through a company whose custom-built app offered the kind of detailed directions I could only fantasise about. 'Some of the routes' sign posting definitely needs to be updated,' agreed David. These were seasoned pros; they'd even brought their own saddles. I thought of them the next day as I winced my way off the bike after finally reaching the Chateaux of Chaumont and later Chenonceau (and yes, there does seem to be an obsession with the letter C when naming castles). These two have a backstory worthy of a soap opera. Henri II's formidable wife, Catherine de Medici, had looked on jealously when he granted Chenonceau to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. So after Henri died, Catherine orchestrated a royal chateau swap, nabbing Chenonceau and giving Diane Chaumont. As consolation prizes go, it wasn't a bad one. Today, Chaumont's fairytale façade encloses an interior filled with modern art installations, with everything from a hanging garden in the chapel beneath Catherine's old room to crystal books glimmering in the library. Even the gardens double as an extensive gallery space, with a different theme each year. It's quite the contrast to Chenonceau, where the grounds are less about art and more about the love rivals trying to outdo each other in flowerbeds and fountains. Both also left their mark on the architecture. Diane built the elegant bridge linking the château to the opposite riverbank; not to be outdone, Catherine had the bridge covered to create a 60-metre-long gallery begging for a candlelit ball. Arriving late in the day, I had it to myself. By day three, I could fully appreciate the (ahem) cycle of life – eat, sleep, bike, repeat – as I finally cracked the navigation. It turns out that the Loire à Vélo website works with an app it failed to mention called Geovelo. Once downloaded, it transformed my experience, offering proper directions, route options and a chance to feel briefly competent. A much more relaxed pedal that day took me from Chenonceau to Amboise, weaving along the banks of the Cher river, then through spring-green vineyards and undulating woodland that filtered the light like something from a painting. It was bliss. With a press of the e-bike's boost button, I surged up gentle hills, soaring down them to occasionally top 30kph before reverting to a more civilised 20. The only real hazard was a tunnel so low that staying on the bike might have resulted in a lengthy lie down before reaching Amboise, where Leonardo da Vinci's tomb lay in a tiny chapel atop the chateau's impossibly high walls. And so to Tours, via one last refreshment stop in Montlouis-sur-Loire's Le Clos des Vignes de Cray vineyard. Here, the delightful Evelyne Antier wasn't surprised to hear about my misadventures. 'People turn up all the time complaining about how lost they've been,' she said. My advice then, for anyone chasing chateaux culture from behind the handlebars is to download Geovelo, take a battery pack (these apps are hungry), and, unless you're built like a Tour de France veteran, consider investing in a seat cover. Your backside will thank you. Essentials Jane Knight was a guest of the Centre-Val de Loire tourist office ( Four nights' B&B with cycle hire and luggage transfer but not chateaux entry costs from €610/£518 ( Itineraries can be found on The train line has tickets from London to Blois-Chambord, returning from Tours to London from £123.
