D'un chateau à un autre

This is where I went today:

I liked it far better than Chambord, so much homier. 

After lunch we headed down the road from Amboise to the Domaine Francois Chidaine tasting room, La Cave Insolite.  They sell a number of wines by other regional producers, but we went there to taste Chidaine's. 

It was revealing to taste the difference between the Chenin Blanc from both Montlouis (south back of the Loire) and Vouvray on the other side.  The Montlouis wines of this house have a more pronounced minerality -- flintiness, and there is indeed flint in the soil -- while the Vouvrays are softer and less layered and nuanced in my view.  In short, Chidaine's Vouvrays seem quite unremarkable, certainly far less distinctive than Huet's.  The Montlouis wines strike me as more flavorful and balanced, including the driest sec from 2006.

I mentioned to the young lady in the tasting room that we wanted to visit one other winery before we left tomorrow morning.  She looked at my list and enthusiastically pointed to Domaine de Belliviere in Lhomme.  We (all six of us) decided to drive up there.  After an hour-long ride through some very pretty villages and a lot of forests and farmland, we found ourselves in a desolate little town where nothing was open and the populace seemed to have fled, prompting young Miss Levy to ask, "Is this an Orthodox Jewish town?" 

I had a good laugh at that one, which was especially good because we called the winery and found out that they too were closed on Saturdays.  So here I am back at Clos d'Amboise, stuffing this electronic message in a metaphorical bottle. 

Strappo wearing best fake smile for photo, taken almost as we type











What I'm looking at now



Pas mal, eh?

Comments

[TasterB]

No, not bad...don't worry about us back here in NE...we're making do.