Sancerre road-trip part 5...following a label

During our wine tastings of Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé wines Pauline had decided that the best wine she had actually tasted was the one we had had with our meal the night before in the 'Tavern du Connéctable'

Restocking after our visit

We all agreed that yes it had been very good so she went back and asked the proprietor where it was from. He told us it was from an independent producer of  Pouilly Fumé 'Claude Michet' across the Loire just outside Saint-Andelain - but it would be difficult to find. Undaunted, we headed over the river to seek him out.

After a bit of driving around we eventually found him with the help of one of the 'locals' in 'Les Berthiers' just outside Saint-Anderlain.

We were lead into the 'cave', which consisted of a spotless, modern bottling line, by Claude's mother, who was quite charming and insisted as it was nearing lunchtime, she should feed us with some snack biscuits and a good couple of glasses as an aperitif .

We were glad we went as she made the experience even more enjoyable. We left with a couple of cases each.

A sparkling day out...Part I

We had to do a bit of re-stocking of our wine cellar recently which meant a trip up to Vouvray and Montlouis-sur-Loire with friends with the same objective.

Our first stop was at the 'Cave des Producteurs' in Vouvry where Mike &Liz were picking up a repeat order for friends back in the UK, Jane & Peter were making their first visit and Pauline and I were back for another visit.

On this visit we all decided to take the guided tour of the caves and arrived just in time for the 11.30am tour in English.(there are others at 2.30pm and 4.30pm).They only charge €2.70 and its great value for money.

If you arrive a little early there is a video 'The four seasons of the wine maker' you can watch...

plus a small cooperage (barrel making) museum. These are free to view even if you are not taking the tour.

Then its down into the caves with your guide, on our visit a charming and knowledgeable young lady, where you are lead through part (a short walk) of the vast network of tunnels. After visiting the caves you are then lead across the road to the bottling plant where the is a gallery to view a very small part of the process which is explained in a good video presentation.

(This and previous pic. courtesy of Mike Funning)

Then its on to the serious stuff of tasting and buying - you do not need to buy anything and there was no pressure from our guide...but how could you resist that smile? 

If you haven't already done these we would encourage you to go..oh and take additional clothing even on a warm summer's day as it is obviously a constant 13 degrees in the caves (we didn't!).

Footnote: Next year's production has been severely affected by June hailstorms see article here.