August 14, 2012 Lunch – Cave de Fours de Vin de Vouvray,
Dinner-Jean Claude’s and Kitt’s house in Moulineuf.
We started out around 8:00 with an egg omelet with parsley
and goat cheese and toast and coffee and tea at Moulin Geant. We then drove to Tours and got lost and finally
found the road to Vouvray. When we
arrived at Rochamond?, we were directed by the Tourist information lady to the
Chateau de Ausnishers, which was recommended by O’Neil in her Wine Bible as one
of the best Vouvrays. It did not
disappoint. We bought four bottles. Then we went up the hill to a cave dug back
into the hillside quite a distance that circled around with two entrances so
there could be an entrance, a circuit and an exit. Inside were over twenty vineyards were
tasting and three foie gras fabricators were serving their products. At the foie gras dealers, we tried duck liver
mousse, rillettes of duck meat, duck meat with duck blood or boudin, or a
mixture of liver and duck meat on bread.
The wines were all from Vouvray and all Chenin blanc. They included sparkling wine in four degrees
of sweetness. The Extra dry ranged from
0 to 4-5% by volume, the Brut was up to 6-10% and the demi-sec even higher
sugar. Between Brut and demi-sec there
was a category of 1/4 sec that was slightly drier than demi-sec and sweeter
than Brut. There are also a wide range
of still wines starting with sec or dry with little or no sugar to moulleux
that is very sweet and even sweeter is Graines nobles that are usually picked
by hand when the grapes are almost frozen.
After two hours of tasting we got hungry and bought a sandwich of
pate. I ate rillettes of duck and
Suzette ate boudin with some of our groceries and glasses of complimentary wine
from the tasting tables.
Most of the wine was quite good and we bought two or three
bottles of wine. There were lots of
silver and gold medal winners.
At around 2:00 we headed to Ambroise. When we arrived it was packed with
tourists. I went to exchange money and
got 1.28 Euros to the Dollar at the postal banc. I then went to the Tourist Information
office and bought tickets for Amboise Castle, Leonardo Da Vinci’s house from
1519 to 1523 and Chateau Chennonceau (65 Euros) and went back to the car. We then drove to a parking lot near both the
Castle and Leonardo’s house and walked to each.
The castle sits on an imposing site above the Loire, but it is not as
imposing as Angers, perhaps because part of its battlements were torn down and
replaced with a Renaissance chateau and gardens after 1500. It also looked as if some of the lower
battlements facing the Loire River had been removed because a street of modern
houses stood between the castle walls and the river. The
most interesting part of the castle for me was the grave of Leonardo Da Vinci
in the small St. Hubert Chapel on the grounds of the castle. We also enjoyed seeing Leonardo’s home given
to him by Francois I and the small museum of his models. After touring the house we ate a pistachio
and rum raisen ice cream.
Then on to Chennoceau which is the loveliest chateau I have
seen to date. It is ideally positioned spanning
the Cher River it is a large square three story castle on the north side of the
river with four decorative turrets and a long glassed two story promenade above
the river connected to the castle. It
was built in 1499 by Francois I for one of his favorites, Diana of Portiers,
but when he died his widow Catherine de Medici took ownership of the castle and
added another garden in the classical French Renaissance style like our back
garden, eight triangles within a square.
The Hundred Years War ended in 1453, when the French finally
forced the English out of France, so when the Renaissance reached France in the
late 1400’s there appears to have been a spurt of building that converted
existing defensive castles into more livable castles, as at Amboise, and
construction of more pleasure palaces for hunting and relaxation and
entertainment along the lines of the Renaissance’s Palladian ideals of
symmetry.
I think I read in one of the guide books that the owner of
the castle had a good relationship with the local people in 1779, so Chenenceau
escaped the ravages of the Revolution.
It looks like the original wool wall coverings, tapestries, furniture
and paintings are still intact. The mostly religious themed paintings include
some by Reubens, Tintoretto, Bassano, Ribera, Van Dyck, Clouet, Poussin and
Murillo.
After touring the castle, we walked the gardens. My favorite was the farm and kitchen garden
with is row after row of mature and beautifully colored vegetables and
flowers. If seems that the garden
designer selected those vegetables with the most vibrant colors. For example there was a row of alternating
bright yellow and red kale.
We finally left Chenenceau at around 7:00 pm and started
driving to Moulinheuf along the Cher River.
We passed one more castle at Chivessy? and many lovey small villages
with lovely houses. Finally at Moulinchard,
we turned north and drove toward Blois on the Loire. When we arrived at Blois, which is a fairly
large city, we had difficulty finding the correct road out of town and ended up
in an area with many high rise apartment houses and some North African looking
fellows working on cars in the parking lot, so we got to briefly see that part
of France also. After retracing our
turns, we found the road to Moulineuf and arrived at around 8:30 p.m. We stopped at the Hotel du Pont and the lady
said she had a reservation for us, so we settled in, although we had copied
Kitt and Jean Claude’s number incorrectly and were unable to call them. So
about fifteen minutes later Kitt came over to the restaurant patio where we had
decided to take dinner. We walked the two
blocks to their house and were warmly greeted by their friend Michelle and his
wife Shelly, who was from Tulsa. We sat
and drank a rose from Provence that was a gamay and syrah blend and a St.
Emilion red with rosette salami and chorizo and cantal cheese with Gallatine of
Papp and a lovely bread accompanied with a sea salt butter. Finally at 11 p.m. we said good bight and
walked back to our hotel.
Bon Appetit
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