The rental-car lady in Tours, France, said to me: “You’ll get lost?” I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a French invitation to scram out of the Europcar office. I had just declined to rent a GPS unit, on the grounds that for my five-day jaunt driving around the Loire Valley, my first trip to the area, the road taken by mistake might be the most revelatory.
Reader, I got really lost. The Loire is the longest river in France, stretching 630 miles through thoroughly modern cities, quaint medieval towns, and long passages of gorgeous countryside; it forms the winding spine of a huge region. For my visit I picked a dead-center swathe of the corridor, loosely bound by the area around the cities of Tours and Angers—seemingly a doable stretch, but still there were times when I drove round and round those rotaries or traffic circles, scanning the signs for help.
Luckily, even the smallest approaching towns are usually signposted, including one that appeared to have just three buildings total. In the end I was able to make my appointments at some of the area’s top wineries. As a wine critic, I had long wanted to explore the region I consider the most diverse and quality-packed in the world. The Loire does it all, from red to white to sparkling to still to sweet to dry, and the wines are unbelievably affordable.
I wasn’t disappointed. The winemakers I visited in Savennières and Vouvray—both of which specialize in steely (though very different) whites made from Chenin Blanc as well as Chinon (delightful, fragrant reds from Cabernet Franc)—have a remarkable sense of purpose and connection to the land.
In Vouvray, for instance, which is next door to the lovely midsize city of Tours, the vineyards are perched above a rocky and sheer cliff over the Loire. “They’re all high up, otherwise it’s not Vouvray,” said Benoît Gautier, who makes dozens of incredible whites under his name from the special clay and limestone soil.
The French idea of terroir—that a particular piece of land can produce unique characteristics in a wine—can seem a little vague and metaphorical. But in Vouvray, you can get a taste, smell, and feel of the terroir by staying inside the cliff that supports those special vineyards. The rooms at the famous Relais & Châteaux property Les Hautes Roches are literally carved into the rock face and look down at the river. True, my room was a bit ’70s-looking, with its decor of orange-and-red prints—the nicest rooms are actually in the lovely freestanding home on the property—but the chance to burrow into the famous terroir for a night was impossible to pass up. My room was cool and humid but not dank; it was like a modified wine cellar, and I felt well aged indeed when I awoke.
Once I had checked out of my cave, I needed to visit at least one of the grand châteaux that have made the Loire a classic tourist destination. Again, I relied on a winemaker (and about a dozen rotary arrows) for guidance. “If you visit one château, it has to be Chenonceau,” said Jean-François Merieau, whose Touraine bottlings include wonderful Gamay and Malbec varietals.
The 16th-century manor, built on the site of a 12th-century home, juts out over the Cher River, and has everything in your real estate fantasy, including extensive gardens, a hedge maze, a moat, turrets, and wonderfully preserved rooms hung with emotive Tintoretto and Correggio paintings.
The kitchen and pantries, encased in stone and brick, had stuffed boars’ heads and huge meat cleavers, proving that the residents lived grandly, ate a lot of delicious game, and that the times were decidedly more brutal than our own. And nothing drove home the point more than the fact that the kitchen was equipped with an escape hatch—when the enemy approached, the residents (notably Diane de Poitiers and later the arch-nemesis who evicted her, Catherine de Médicis) could lower themselves into awaiting boats to escape down the Cher. They were always prepared to hit the road, so to speak, and I took that as my cue to press onward.
Destination: Chinon, home to my personal favorite red wine, an aromatic charmer that’s often the best value on a restaurant wine list. But I never got more lost than I did within the town of Chinon, at the center of the wine appellation, which is a little absurd given its tiny size. The one-way streets led me up, down, and around, and I think I drove on every single block until I hit the town square, on which my hotel (the so-so Best Western) happened to be situated.
But once I put the car in park, I realized that this would be the perfect place to set down temporary roots the next time I’m in the Loire. Centered on a Medieval fortress, Chinon is small and walkable, with a beautiful park on the Vienne River where old men play the traditional ball-throwing game pétanque and occasionally relieve themselves behind even older trees.
My biggest stroke of luck was to stumble on what I later learned may be Chinon’s top restaurant, L’Oceanic. At this family-owned seafood place, I ordered sandre (perch) in a Chinon sauce that had an electric purple color I’ll never forget. The exquisitely emulsified blend of butter, wine, and a touch of vinegar went perfectly with a half bottle of Domaine de la Noblaie Chinon 2006, a high-quality producer that I visited the very next day.
L’Oceanic is located on the Rue Rabelais, named for the great writer François Rabelais, Chinon’s most famous resident by a mile. His best-known work, the satirical Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, happens to be about two giants who go on a star-crossed odyssey to find something called the “Divine Bottle.” That sure sounds a lot like my own wine-obsessed quest in the Loire—and I bet the giants didn’t have GPS, either.
Ted Loos writes the “Tasting Notes” wine column for Epicurious.com every month and also contributes to Vogue, The New York Times, and other publications. He last wrote for Gourmet Live about the Future of Georges Duboeuf. Follow him @LoosLips on Twitter, where he tweets the #WinoTheDay.