No wine today!

Wednesday 14 August

Today we had reservation for a wine tour at a "cave" in Montrichard at 2 pm so off we went and arrived in good time.  Alas, a rather rude receptionist informed us that no, we did we did not.  I explained (politely) that I had spoken at length on the phone to a staff member and made the arrangements two days earlier.  "Well that person made a mistake", I was told.  "We have no tours today or tomorrow because the staff are a wine festival.  You can walk around by yourselves and then come back here for a degustation."  Ok then - so we went in the indicated direction and found ourselves in some dark dank caves in the side of the cliff - a few weird art prints but no evidence of any wine.  Eventually after stumbling through some dimly lit passages we saw a few bottles of wine in some wooden crates.  Riveting stuff!
Enough was enough and we departed as soon as possible - no inclination to spend any money on the wines of this establishment.  We couldn't really work out what we would have seen on an hour long tour anyway.  Place is called Monmousseau by the way.
So we looked at our wine map of the Loire region and decided to head for Chaumont-sur-Loire about twenty minutes away.  The Wine Route de Touraine passes through here and we thought maybe a bit of a drive along would bring us to some other wineries.  Chaumont was busy as there is a famous garden exhibition on at the chateau during the summer.  The chateau is lovely and sits high above the river and the village.  The large number of cars parked around the village put us off visiting the chateau and of course we were on a wine mission - and we have a chateau visit planned for tomorrow.  The route took us somewhat north of the Loire River and just as we were beginning to doubt the existence of any grapes amongst the cornfields we came across an area of vines surrounding a town called Mesland.  Surely this would be the place?  No, just a sad, dilapidated looking town with a few fading advertising boards proclaiming the existence of wine domaines and caves - all of which seemed to be closed.
Plan B now came into action and we drove along the northern banks of the Loire to the riverside town of Blois (pronounced Blwa - if you can!).  Blois is a very nice town with the usual chateau, cathedral, medieval streets and old colombage houses in the centre -although I must say we have been getting a bit blois-ay about such things lately. 


Colombage houses, Blois

It was very pleasant to stroll through the town in a leisurely fashion and to sit a while in the tree lined main square watching the world go by.  Weather was glorious - not a cloud in the sky, the gentlest of breezes and a very acceptable 25 degrees.  Leaving town was a bit of a mission as Tomtom took us into some streets that were not designed for cars and in fact had barriers at the exits - oh dear, what to do?  Jess went off to see if we were ever going to be able to leave Blois - turns out that the barriers have sensors so when we drove close they miraculously disappeared into the tarmac.  Phewwwww!  Maree and Mel missed all this fun as we had arranged to collect them at the bottom of the hill. The rest of the journey home was thankfully uneventful.

Loire River at Blois

 Jess and I  were keen to try the restaurant next to our house in St Aignan so we took ourselves there while Maree and Mel decided on home-cooking tonight.  The Bacchus bistro has been consistently busy for both lunch and dinner ever since we arrived so we thought it should be good.  In fact it was excellent and we had a delicious meal and the wine was so lovely we had two glasses each.  We both had pork medallions with garlic cream sauce, baby potatoes and pan fried zucchini.  A very delicate and just the right size meal which we enjoyed outside in the beautiful evening. I shall miss the long summer evenings.  Restaurant full again.
Let's hope that Chateau Cheverny has not gone to a wine festival when we arrive tomorrow!


End of an excellent meal at Bacchus Bistro, St Aignan (note the pandas upstairs!)