Wednesday, August 15, 2012

August 14, 2012 Lunch – Cave de Fours de Vin de Vouvray, Dinner-Jean Claude’s and Kitt’s house in Moulineuf.


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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