As I said in my last post, we were to meet up with family in France. After a brief three day stay in Normandy, we picked up our co-grandparents at the airport outside of Paris in our rental car and headed for the Loire Valley. We were to meet up with the rest of the family at Le Château Saint-Cyr-Du-Gault after the grandchildren finished school. The Château is the residence of a French family who purchased it a few years ago and offer for rent the grounds and a large secondary residence to tourists and as a wedding venue. Erin (my son-in-law’s mother), after considerable research, decided it would be the place to hang out as we spent a few days exploring larger châteaus (now mostly state owned) and tasting the wine of the region. Erin and her husband had a great experience traveling in the Loire valley on another trip with friends; where they made a connection with a man named Mario, who owns Val de Loire Travel. We felt quite fortunate to meet him on this trip, as he was the perfect person to take us to several places in the valley. In the few days we had, we were able to see four public or foundation owned castles: Château Royal d’Amboise, Château du Clos Lucé, Château de Chenonceau, and Châteaude Chaumont-sur-Loire, and visited five vineyards and talked to four winemakers (https://bredif.deladoucette.fr [known for Vouvray and provided an excellent tour of the ancient cellars], https://www.chateaudeminiere.com [good sparkling Rosé and lovely tour of the grounds], lame-delisle-boucard [could not find a secure website, but we enjoyed the wines with lunch in the vineyard of Mario’s uncle], Château du Petit Thouars Winery [could not find a secure website, but we purchased bottles and thoroughly enjoyed talking to the owner of the vineyard; a direct descendant of the French nobility who started the estate and who knew the history and spoke perfect English], https://montdomaine.fr/?lang=en [Good and affordable wines with a lot of variety and we much appreciated the passion of the winemaker and his ability to communicate with us though he would have preferred speaking in French. We bought the most bottles from him from this region.] Loire is not as famous outside of France as Burgundy or Bordeaux as a wine region. We hope to visit them also, but don’t know if we will get it done on this trip. I have included some photos of the bottles and the cellars if you are inclined to look at the photos.) We learned a lot of French history along with the grandchildren and tasted a fair amount of wine from the region with the adults. I found it most interesting to talk to a winemaker whose family has grown grapes on the ancestral lands for hundreds of years–since the time Columbus crossed the Atlantic. We learned in one cellar tour how the high quality wine was hidden from the Germans during the occupation of WW2. We bought the most wine from an estate whose winemaker was a member of the French National Rugby team. It was a great experience for all. To see photos that chronicle the trip click here. To see family photos (private to those who have been granted a password) click here. (The photos are mostly in the order they were taken.)
It was certainly beyond any dream I had as a child, but if you grew up in France, it might be something that you thought about. The owner of the place where we stayed in Saint-Cyr-Du-Gault said (while he was giving us a tour of the estate) when he was a boy, he dreamed of owning a castle. He said, matter-of-factly, now he has three; the one we visited, one in the French Alps, and one in the south of France, plus a flat in Paris. We were happy he (and his wife) allowed us to experience a piece of his dream. It was a great place to gather as a family. Thank you to him for sharing his boyhood dream with us, and thank you Erin for finding it, and making all the arrangements.