La Mere Jean

The train flew past fields of rapeseed, brilliant yellow, with the occasional stone wall or church spire nestled into the dimple of a hill.  There wasn't much in the flashing landscape to prove I was in France, hurtling towards Lyon, France's gastronomic heart.  I'd made a reservation at a bouchon a couple hours earlier under the vaulted ceilings of the Gare de Lyon while I waited for my train.  Bouchons are a relic, a piece of old-school, rustic French food in all its porc-y glory.  I was hoping for checked tablecloths, for pâté en crôute, for offal charcuterie and carafes of Beaujolais.  
I wrestled my bag off the train, hailing a cab outside.  We threaded through the city.  It reminded me of a smaller, shabbier Paris.  I didn't have much in the way of French cities to compare it to, since Paris was the only big one I knew.  There were Loire villages from my trip seven months earlier, but those were small and absurdly quaint, hewn from limestone on the banks of the Loire river.  This was a sprawling city, albeit one on the banks of a river too, the mighty Rhône, which we passed over on a vaulted bridge.    I found my rented flat after a handful of confused circles around the narrow cobblestone alleyways past the same cluster of Lyonnais men idly sipping afternoon beer and coffee at a flimsy orange café table.  
I dressed for dinner and wound down the narrow streets of the city that bled into a wide boulevard shaded with elm trees, with tulips and poppies lining the grass in the center.  The Rhône river was to my left, grey under a sky that threatened rain.  

I turned off onto a narrow cobbled street lined with restaurants clustered close together, and suddenly I was there, at Mere Jean, a cozy bouchon that had turned up at the top of my internet search while I waited on my train in the Gare de Lyon.  It was seven o' clock, but it looked like I was early from the empty look of the place.  It was narrow, with a large table running from the entrance to the back.  A little stand with the cash register stood by the door, and a counter ran down the wall opposite the table, crowded with crocks and loaves of bread, and built-in shelves full of wine.

I slid into the wooden bench at the marble topped table.  I perused the menu and ordered a mini carafe of the house rosé.  I settled on a prixe fixe menu which included various pork and offal morsels, along with lentils, and unlimited bread.  I sipped my crisp, fruity wine and peered out the windows at the people walking by, and at my hosts, a husband and wife, kind and athletic, bustling back and forth across their tiny domain.  Eventually people began to trickle in as I ate my pork and tripe and lentils.  A joyful, rowdy crew of friends sat at the opposite end of the table, and I listened to snatches of their chatter amongst themselves and with the restauranteurs.  A middle-aged woman with dark hair and a plain, pale face sat down next to me, across from a slender boy, dark and good-looking, a bit awkward.  She had to be his mother, but it seemed they were catching up.  Maybe he went to college in Lyon, and she had come to visit him.  They seemed to be tourists, enjoying the kitschy down-home charm of the bouchon.  She ordered the same starter I had, and when it arrived she leaned over and asked me about whether it was a cold or hot dish.  "This dish is cold, and the sausage is hot," I told her, elated that my French could gracefully cover this simple exchange. 

My main dish arrived then, one of the storied bouchon classics: Quenelles de Brochet, fluffy pillows of pike-flecked mousse delicately poached in cream sauce, served flaming hot.  My hosts set it down with a firm, Attention!  C'est tres chaud!  I ordered a glass of Chiroubles to go accompany it, light-headed as I already was from the whirlwind of travel and French food-induced joy.  I carved off steaming slices of quenelle, dragging each one through the rich pool of cream.  I was reaching the limits of consumption, but couldn't resist tearing off shreds of baguette and using them to soak up more cream.  I took long swigs of fruity, earthy Chiroubles.  
I was beyond full but couldn't say no to dessert.  First, there was the creamiest round of Saint Marcellin, alone on a plate.  I pushed through the rind into the gooey, tangy cream beneath.  It was sharp and funky, then pure enveloping milky richness.  I swirled my baguette through the pooling cheese.

After there was some sort of pleasing wedge of caramelly, nutty torte.  I think I ordered a coffee to go with it, a gesture of reckless abandon at that hour.  I settled up with my hosts and set off into the Lyonnaise night.  It was misting rain, and I had to pee so badly I was peering down every alleyway, seeing if I dared to christen Lyon's darkened streets.  There were people out but the city seemed mostly shut down.  Whether it was the rain or just the golden glow of streetlights, everything was bathed in a cozy, dusky light.  I raced up the stairs past a glowing, burbling fountain, the toilet in my Air Bnb the only thing on my mind.

Lyon had charmed me with one evening, one nighttime stroll, one earthy, rustic bouchon meal. I wanted more time to explore, but tomorrow I was heading to wine country.  I would have to come back for more bouchons, markets and Beaujolais in bars.  Tomorrow I was going to see the vineyards of Beaujolais in all their gnarled, pastoral beauty.

Pierre-Jean , Château De Fesles, and a Bottle of Bonnezeaux

It was cloudy and cool and rain hung heavy in the air as I drove past the stone church in the center of Rochefort-sur-Loire, where I'd just met with Florent Baumard.  Pierre-Jean Sauvion had told me to meet him at Château De Fesles in Thouarcé, which was only 20 minutes heading southeast.  I wanted to drive along the river, and so I drove over the bridge and along the road in what seemed to be the right direction.  The road narrowed and cut through another tiny hamlet of houses, many with signs for tasting rooms hanging from gates overgrown with flowers and vines.  The road narrowed to a dead-end path.  I found a place to reverse and drove sheepishly back the way I'd come, past a few gaping schoolchildren standing under shaggy pine trees.  I found a small park with picnic tables near some shops in the center of an unknown village.  I sat at one of the picnic tables in the misty air and looked at the beech leaves on the ground.  I ate a picnic lunch of leftover baguette, chicken rillettes, cornichons, and a bruised pear.  A woman got out of her car and I asked her if she knew how to get to Thouarcé.  She called her husband over and he gave me directions.  I thanked them, wiped the baguette crumbs from my lap, and hit the road.  

My GPS still wouldn't pick up Thouarcé, so I called Pierre-Jean.  He gave me the name of a small adjoining town and agreed to meet me there.  Rain was coming down lightly but persistently as I pulled into a grocery store parking lot, and saw Pierre-Jean emerge from his car.  He was the same energetic, wiry man with warm brown eyes and a wide smile I remembered from his visit to Imbibe months before.  It was a relief to see a familiar face after my days of schlepping solo back and forth across the Loire.  I hopped into his passenger seat and he drove off towards Château De Fesles, talking a mile a minute.  We pulled into a pale gravel drive with stately trees yielding to manicured grounds and a lovely château with adjoining winemaking facilities and vineyards stretching into the distance.  

Pierre-Jean offered me an umbrella, gallantly refusing my offer to share.  We strode around the grounds as he told me all about the history of Château De Fesles, and how he came to make wine there.  He makes wine all over the Loire, under different labels.  He lives in Nantes, in Muscadet, which is where I was supposed to visit him my first day in the Loire, but I got off on the wrong train stop, then I took a train in the opposite direction to where I was going (after I also told an elderly French lady to get on the wrong train with me.)

Pierre-Jean talked rapidly, in perfect English, with a very French and somehow very British accent.  He's an excellent salesman and tour guide, rattling off witticisms I remembered from him visiting Imbibe.  His wine spiel didn't detract from his sincerity, and though he seemed impish and funny, there was immense kindness and dedication in his manner.  He showed me all of the winemaking equipment, the stainless steel tanks and the wooden barrels and the wine presses being hosed out by winery workers.   

We drank through his Château De Fesles line, and then revisited his Sauvion line we sell at Imbibe.  The Chinon in particular stood out: gravel, moss, red berries -- crackly with nervy energy like a thunderstorm on the horizon.  Electric, elegant, and dark yet utterly drinkable.  
The best were yet to come: a vertical of Bonnezeaux, the sister appellation to Quarts de Chaume, famous for the purity and elegance of its Chenin dessert wines.  Rather than the miniature Bordeaux bottle shape of Quarts de Chaume, these were in elegant, slim bottles, like mini Rieslings.  We tasted the 2011, 2010, and maybe the 2008 and 2007?  The vintages have faded since 2016 has slipped into 2017 and now 2018.  I do remember they were transcendent, like eating peach and honey ice cream in a sun-dappled forest, sunning yourself on a rock with your feet dangling in an icy stream.  Of course Pierre-Jean recommended serving foie gras alongside, like a proper Frenchman, but also told me he loved a glass of old Bonnezeaux with a cigar.  I'm not a cigar gal but maybe one day I'll try the combination.  

Pierre-Jean began rummaging in an old cabinet, muttering to himself. 
"It should be here--surely the other group didn't open it?  No, surely not.  Ah!" he pulled out a large brown glass bottle, unlabeled, with cobwebs clinging to it.  
"This is a Bonnezeaux from--well, I don't know exactly the year.  It is at least 20 years old!  Do you want to try?"
"Yes!  Yes, I do."
He gently eased the cork out and poured the deeply golden wine into my glass.  I sniffed, taking in the scent of the most luscious, drippy peaches, the kind that rip away from the pit effortlessly, as well as honeysuckle, candied orange peel, candied ginger, and a darker undercurrent, mysterious and stony, a dripping, echoeing cave lit with flickering candles, the smell of flowers, spices, honey, and fruit sweet and thick in the air.
I blinked and came out of the cave, looking at Pierre-Jean.  He was looking at me, waiting for my reaction.  
"It's a beautiful wine," I said.  "Thank you for sharing it with me."
We took some selfies with my selfie stick, acquired by Katie back in Paris from a hawker outside the Louvre.  Pierre-Jean was bemused, never having used one.  I'd gotten some practice on the route to Coteaux de Loir, at my picnic outside an unknown château, so I was pretty much an expert.

He drove me back to my car in the rain.  I promised to come again, and to visit him in Nantes next time, and see his home turf of Muscadet.  
I drove back to Angers in the rain, boarded the train to Saumur, and made my way slowly back to my air bnb through the damp, luminous gloom of a sunset.  I paused on the bridge over the river, looking at spires of the grey limestone city crouched on the opposite side, with the château presiding above.  I ate the last of my baguette and chicken rillettes.  I was starved.  Darkness was falling as I walked through the town center.  I stopped at a café for a glass of Chenin.  I sat at a table on the near-deserted street and watched the odd passerby.  It was my last night in the Loire.  I didn't want it to end.

I slowly wound my way up the steep hill, past the château, and tucked myself into bed under the eaves of the cottage with window boxes and a back garden with lavender drying on the table.  My host, the sweetest woman, rose early with me, and had a full spread of tartine and coffee, with homemade plum, cherry, and fig jams.  The café au lait was milky and served in a small bowl.  
I gulped it down, we jumped in her car, and drove to the train station.  The castle, the worn limestone buildings, the ancient river streaming slowly beneath flashed past. I stared hard at all of it, trying to emboss the outlines into my mind.  I almost missed my train again, like a moron, standing scrutinizing the screens trying to sort out which platform I needed to go to.  My host, who had already said goodbye, must have little faith in me, because she reappeared, and rushed me to the correct platform in the nick of time.  I thanked her, scrambled aboard, found my seat, and watched the Loire fade away into empty fields on the way back to Paris.

North Chatt Porch Life

Cars are sailing past on Barton Avenue, though it's too early for rush hour.  It seems it's rush hour nearly all the time on this road, except for late at night or early Sunday mornings.  I miss the stillness of the St. Elmo porch, and the solid curve of Lookout Mountain, but I've come to like things about this North Chattanooga porch.  The sun streams onto the corner of its western edge, onto the wilting rust-colored mums and pale orange and sage pumpkin I bought at the pumpkin patch near Signal Mountain.  That was another obscenely gorgeous fall day--the sunlight sparkling in the morning, blinding at midday, fading to mellow perfection by late afternoon.  The cats are at the height of their powers, stalking in the ivy in the crisp dusk and basking in the late afternoon sunlight.  Rey twists and writhes at my feet, her spotted grey belly sunkissed and warm, vibrating with purrs.  
 

The house is coming together inside, too.  Julian has begun to hang art on the  walls we painted grey, and plans for a bookshelf and rug in the dining room are taking shape.  I think we'll make it a cozy home for a few years yet.  It'll be grand one day to move into a place we own, and plant flowers in our own lawn, and pay a mortgage instead of flinging rent money into the void.  But fling we must for a few years yet, and strike that strange balance between loving a place and making it a home, yet not caring to invest too much sweat and tears into it, because impermanence clings to it like the ivy winding its way stealthily around the white bricks of this porch.  I love the ivy, and am trying to train it to take the house over completely.  
I've been so busy I haven't been cooking much, but I want to change that, and carve out enough time once or twice a week to make a Chinese dish that will make me homesick for Beijing, or some cozy fall dish like chicken pot pie or cassoulet, or the Moroccan tagine I've been scheming to make for ages.  

I've been drinking well.  The Louis/Dressner wines we've been getting in at Imbibe are lovely.  In particular I've been crushing on a juicy, funky Gamay/Pinot blend from Herve Villemade in Cheverny.  It reminds me of drinking at La Buvette in Paris with Katie and Q.  It's the same sort of honest, no-frills, chuggable juice.  I'm just missing the pickled eggs and creamy, gooey nectar-of-cheese we had --was it St. Angel?  I'm also missing the cafe tables and tiled floor, and sauccisson prints.  I miss Paris all the time.  I look up plane tickets every week, just to check in, and study French a couple times a week.  I plan on signing up for classes with the Chattanooga School of Language in the spring of next year.  Next will be to figure out some way I can work in Paris doing what I love (writing, wine, wine writing???) and traveling to every French wine region that exists.  Or who knows?  Maybe Tennessee is to be my home base, and I'll take yearly trips to France.  Maybe Julian and I will move to the west coast, or to China as we've idly discussed lately.  (China?  Again?  It seems almost crazy, but I think it would be so fun to explore it with Jules, and it would be different this time.  I'm more self-possessed, and I would go after what I want instead of losing myself to partying, feeling stuck and aimless and alone.)

Just now I'm grateful to be here on my Tennessee porch in the slanting sun, with ivy kissing my shoulder and mums and pumpkins on the stoop beside me, with my love coming home to me and friends coming over for wine later.  

Savennières and Chenin Dreams

My final day in the Loire I rose early and went for a jog.  Clouds hung low and light rain fell intermittently, spattering my glasses.  I ran past the Château and wound down the cobblestone road that zigzagged down into the old city sprawling on the river's bank.  I ran along  the river before doubling back to toil back up the steep hill.  I ate my tartine -- toast with butter and homemade jam -- and milky coffee, and hit the road to Savennières.  I had a meeting at Domaine des Baumard, about an hour's drive from Saumur.  I followed my GPS out onto two-way highways lined with great trees across flat fields stretching endlessly into grey mist.  Rain beat gently on my windshield.  

I came into the town of Rochefort-sur-Loire, cobbled and quaint with a stone church in the center like most of them.  I drove up and down a tiny street more like an alley, passing an old man sitting on a bench at the side of the road.  By my second pass, he was staring at me openly, so I rolled down my car window and said, "Bonjour!  Je cherche pour Domaine des Baumard!  Vous savez...?"  He hemmed and hawed, deep in thought, then barked out some kindly directions to where he thought it was.  I was nearly there--I just had to slip through the gate off the alleyway.  

Immediately I realized I was in a different sort of estate than the rustic and modern ones I'd visited.  The beech trees drooped their branches over the pale gravel drive leading up to the gracious house of pale stone, and the large shrubs were trimmed into the shape of wine bottles. I met a kindly woman who would be conducting the tour.  She spoke no English, but I assured her I would listen, though my spoken French was limited.  She led me into a spare, high-ceilinged room with parquet floors, murals and a few paintings.  An Oriental rug and several imposing cushioned chairs with burnished, curved arms sat around a table in the middle of the room, with wines arranged on it.  A lacquered wooden cabinet stood at the end of the room, with a display of the domaine's wines arranged on a wooden tree like clusters of grapes on a vine--except these were the final, bottled expression of the grapes.

We tasted several crémants, white and rosé, starting with the "Cart Turquoise," a non-vintage blend of Chenin, Cabernet Franc, and Chardonnay.  Next was the "Tirage 2010," a blend of Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay, followed by "Carte Corail," a rosé of Cabernet Franc and Grolleau.  The final sparkling was a pale rosé in frosted glass, also of Cab Franc and Grolleau.  We then moved to the Savennières still wines--Chenin time!  We began with the 2014 Clos de Saint Yves, a fruity and mineral Chenin, the classic wine of the domaine.  Its minerality was evident after just two years but it could be aged for 10-20 years.  Next up were two vintages of the Clos du Papillon, a prime vineyard in the shape of a butterfly wing, from schist, sandstone, and sandy soils.  I tasted the 2010 and 2007 vintage.  It was amazing the layers of depth the 2007 had over the 2010.  The stone fruit was deepened, and the honey and wet stone flavors were more resonant.  The final wine in the grouping was the "Trie Spéciale," from the 2014 vintage.  This wine is only made when the vintage shows great potential, from multiple passes, or "tries" through the vineyard for the best fruit.  It was rich, bursting with ripe fruit with that bracing, sullen stony backdrop.  I wanted to nonchalantly order a case for my cellar and ship it back to the US...but my travel budget wasn't quite so flush.  I just sipped it slowly.  Richer wines were waiting.

Carte d'Or Côteaux du Layon was the first sweet wine we tasted.  Côteaux du Layon is an appellation in Anjou renowned for sweet wines.  The Carte d'Or was breathtaking--sweet and honeyed with ripe peach and spice and austere, chalky stone melding in the glass.  Like sex on an early summer day, dreaming of the melancholy of winter.  I wanted to drink it forever, but we were about to go deeper down the sweet wine rabbit hole.  
Quarts de Chaume is an enclave within Chaume, a village within the Côteaux du Layon region, but one with its own AOC, such is the staggering depth and succulence of its wines.  It and Bonnezeaux (another AOC within the AOC) produce among the best and most age-worthy sweet wines in the world.  

We began with the Quarts de Chaume 2011.  It was like nectar, so concentrated with the flavor of ripe peaches and honey and flowers, if you dripped that ripe ooze down a rough wall of schist.  The acidity should've been like a razor but instead it sliced through the ripe, sweet peaches like butter and lifted them up up up into ethereal, refreshing bliss.  (I realize I sound like a moron, but these wines could make you mad with pleasure.)

Quarts de Chaume 2009 and 2007 were next up.  My tasting notes here read "swOOooOn."  I'll spare you further rhapsodic moans, but the basics are thus: the only thing better than fine sweet Chenin is aged sweet Chenin.  The stony minerality takes on a darker, more somber tone but doesn't juxtapose more with the acidity and sweetness, it just sinks deeper in.  Deeper and darker and richer.

Around this point in the tasting Florent Baumard came striding in from the harvest.  He was a short, strapping man with a kindly, fair face and a gentle, gallant air.  He spoke French briefly but switched to English when he realized the extent of my French.  He asked if I wanted to tour the vineyards with him.  

"Uh, yes!  If you have time," I added quickly.

"You are a brand ambassador for us, so I think it is important," he answered.

Away we went in his vintage Jeep.  We bumped and throttled uphill into the rocky vineyards, and he told me about his history, how he didn't used to want the domaine that his father had restored in the 1950s.  It had been in his family for many generations, and he wasn't planning to add his name to the list of stewards.  He finally caved however, returning from university brimming with ideas and opinions of how things should be done.  

"I was very French; I thought I knew everything," he smiled.  

I was only a little in love with him; he spoke English with the faintest British accent and was aristocratic and gracious.

Eventually he learned to work with and not against his father, and now runs the estate like, well, a boss.  He showed me his vineyards stretching down towards the town of Savennières, and we looked at the Chenin grapes hanging on the vine, some fuzzy with noble rot.  

"Eat some!"  He urged, and when I hesitated for a split second he laughed.  "Are you scared?"
I slowly chewed the sweet, fuzzy grapes.  They were completely delicious.  We drove to another vineyard, this one facing out into the valley the Layon River flows through, which creates the foggy, humid conditions needed for noble rot.

I told him I was going to the Mosel next, and he raised an eyebrow.  

"The Mosel makes very fine wines," he mused.  "We had a vintage, 2004, which was very cool, and the wine was almost like a Riesling from the Mosel.  Very delicate."

When we came to his cellar he led me into the low dark caves, full of stacked bottles.  He plunged into the depths and emerged with a bottle of 2007 Quarts de Chaume and a bottle of 2004 Clos du Papillon.  

"Now you can taste it and see if it is like the Mosel wines," he insisted.  

He had to get back to harvest.  He crinkled his kind eyes at me and wished me a safe journey to Germany.  I thanked him profusely for taking time to show me his vineyards.  I crunched down the pale gravel and got into my shiny rental, stowing the bottles lovingly in the passenger seat.  I drove away from the estate, my eyes starry with Chenin dreams.  
 

Franc & Chenin with Catherine Breton

This time I had the right address.  

The high hills of Sancerre  and dappled forests gave way to the sun-baked autoroute, then I was back in the gently sloping fields of Bourgueil.  It was flatter here, endless stretching vineyards and little centre-villes, and rows of houses with vintner names and tasting rooms advertised on wooden signs.  I passed the giant cluster of grapes in a wine glass in the roundabout, and sped past green rows of vines until I came to the warehouse complex where Pierre and Catherine Breton made their wines--not the cottage in the middle of vineyards I had visited yesterday.  Pierre wasn't there, and Catherine was in a frenzy, for harvest was starting and she was rushing around from vineyard to facility.  She apologized for being short on time, and lamented that I hadn't been able to visit yesterday, when things were a little calmer.  She had giant splashes of purple grape juice on her khaki corduroy pants.

"I liked these pants!" she said regretfully, laughing at her misfortune.  Her face crinkled with humor.  I suggested she fully dip them into a vat of juice, a natural dye job.  She brought me inside to show me the tanks, foudres, and concrete eggs that housed her and her husbands natural cuvees of Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc.

Catherine and Pierre have been making wine together since the early 1980s.  Pierre comes from the land of Cabernet Franc, and Catherine may as well have Chenin coursing through her veins.  Their wines have been certified organic since the early 1990s, and they began introducing biodynamic practices shortly thereafter.  They are now certified biodynamic as well.  They have been a huge influence on the natural wine movement both in their region and in the wine drinking world as a whole, starting a natural wine fair in 1999 with a band of their winemaking friends called "La Dive Bouteille."  Their "Trinch" Cabernet Franc was one of the first natural wines I remember trying when I worked at a different shop across the river three years ago.  It was a major player in my (ongoing) love affair with Loire Cabernet Franc.  I hope next February or the one after I can go La Dive Bouteille in the caves of Saumur.  

We started the tasting with a 2015 Chenin, "La Dilettante Tranquille."  Its grown on silex soil, a mixture of flint and sand.  My tasting notes read, V mineral, herbs & chalk & fruit & hint of oxidation.  I could drink Chenin like this every day.  I want to buy another wine fridge, build a wine cellar, add on rooms to my house, to fill with Chenin like this.  Nevermind that I don't own a house.  I'll erect one, for and to Chenin.  Textured, deep, honeyed, stinky, herbal--like peaches and stinky cheese served on warm stones, drizzled with honey and sprinkled with crushed herbs and almond skins.  

We moved on to an old-vine Bourgueil, "Nuits d'Ivresse," vinified entirely without sulphur, grown on clay and limestone soils.  It was crunchy, vegetal, spicy, starting out juicy and ending dry.  Next up was a Bourgueil from an old enclosed vineyard dating back from before the the French Revolution, "Clos Sénéchal."  Aged in foudre, it is bottled without fining or filtration.  We tasted the 2011, and in my tasting notes I scribbled, Strawberres, mushrooms, earth.

Catherine gave me a couple of their wine posters, recommendations for dining in Saumur, and the address of a wine bar on the scenic route back to Saumur.  I thanked her profusely.  I could see why she and her husband were darlings of the natural wine world--why a server at a natural wine bar in Paris, when she heard I was visiting them, exclaimed, "Could you give her a message for me?" and scribbled a note on the back of her business card and pressed it into my hand.  Catherine was passionate, a force of energy and movement, but kind and unassuming.  She should have been harvesting her grapes, but she was concerned that I enjoy the best of Saumur and her beloved Loire.  

I drove into the evening.  I hit the river and sailed along its slow steady path turned gold by the sun.  I pulled off the road and walked down the damp earth and grass until I got to its bank.  A man was fishing upstream.  I drove away in search of the wine bar Catherine had suggested.  I found it in a tiny hamlet along the river, with a CLOSED sign taped in its window.  I parked my car and roamed the cobbled streets of the little village.  There were remains of a limestone château looming above the village, and I tried to get up into it, but instead got lost in back alleys and spied into gardens tangled with late summer blooms.  The ruins of ancient caves and troglodyte passageways were these people's backyards, where old tractors were rusting and chickens pecked.  

I had dinner in a restaurant at the base of cobbled steps leading up to the village cathedral.  I sat outside, and ordered salade and the poisson course, with a carafe of local Chenin.  The young Austrian couple next to me were on some sort of cycling holiday.  They struck up conversation with the older English couple on the other side of them, who were also touring the region on bicycle, and exchanged stories of the scenic roads.  I ate my fish and let the Chenin wash over me.  It grew dark and the streetlamps lit the cobbles and the cathedral slowly faded into darkness, an ominous shadow.  

I leaned my head out into the cool night on the road back to Saumur.  The sky was black and velvety, but the ridge of limestone soaring up on my left was blacker, puncuated by châteaux glowing gold like limestone candalabras.  A million stars winked and the river cradled me on the right and I laughed in disbelief.
 

Route du Sancerre

My air bnb host thought I was insane to drive to Sancerre from Saumur.
"Oh no!" She exclaimed in horror.  "You cannot drive to Sancerre in one day!  It is too far.  There are so many wines here in Saumur.  Why don't you stay here and try them?"  
She had a point, but my appointments were already made in Sancerre.  I ate buttered toast with homemade mirabelle jam, drank a bowl of café au lait, and walked out into the cool early morning fog.  I got on the interstate before the sun was up, driving past fields where cows grazed in a shroud of mist.  The sun broke through the fog, turning it into rosy cotton candy.  

I fumbled to answer my ringing phone.  

"Hallo, c'est Catherine Breton!"  

"Bonjour Catherine!  I am so sorry about yesterday."

"It's not a problem, but I looked in the email I sent you, and I told you to come to another address."

"I am really sorry about that.  I am having trouble with my work email, and I cannot  read it right now.  I apologize for the trouble."

I wanted to cast my cellphone into the shrubbery off the side of the highway.  I had put a French SIM card in my phone, thinking it would be easier and cheaper than using an international plan.  Instead, I had been locked out of my work email and couldn't access it, and was frantically sending Facebook messages to Julian to have him log into my work email and forward messages to my personal account.  Some messages were slipping through the cracks with the time difference, and I felt like I was in the dark ages, unable to coordinate crucial last minute  details of these long-awaited vigneron visits.  

I agreed to meet Catherine that evening for a short visit, even though it meant I would have to leave Sancerre immediately after my appointments and hightail it back to Bourgueil.  It was a pity I had missed her yesterday, because she was very close to Laurent Herlin and only twenty minutes away from Saumur by the most picturesque road.  

The way to Sancerre was picturesque, too, once I turned off the highway and onto side roads that cut through dappled forests carpeted with lush ferns.  Occasionally the forests would clear and I'd come to a village, its houses overgrown with russet-colored ivy.  The sun was shining brilliantly and the sky was a searing blue.  I came into a meadow and a hawk sailed overhead. The sloping fields revealed a majestic chateau at the far end of the meadow.  I can only assume the hawk was  flying home to the chateau owner to alight on her leather glove with a fierce leer.

The forests grew more enchanted the closer I got to my destination--the ferns more lush, the sunlight as mottled as if I were driving underwater.  I came out on a high hillside with a stone cross, and a sign reading "Route du Sancerre."  I drove down the narrow road into a tiny stone village half buried in ivy.  Hills striped with vines sloped away from the village to the blue sky, and brown grasses waved in the wind.  

I met with Stéphane Riffault first, of Domaine Claude Riffault.  He is Claude's youngest son, and possesses a seriousness and style that matches the precision and class of his wines.  He is also absurdly handsome, in that brown French way, with curling brown hair, dark brown eyes, brown skin, and a dimpled chin.  The tufts of straw in his hair and his hoodie did nothing to detract from his rugged beauty.  I scrambled for every scrap of French I had, assuring him I could understand French much better than I could speak it, so if he wanted to speak French, that was fine by me.  As a result, I understood maybe half the tour, but I probably would have understood about the same if he had spoken English.  He showed me the gleaming fermentation tanks and wooden barrels in the curved white concrete rooms.  The place spoke of subtle country elegance.  It was modern but not flashy. 
He brought out glasses and a pile of bottles.  Each was accompanied by a glass vase layered with soil corresponding to each wine's terroir.  We tasted through the Sauvignon Blancs, elegant and racy, with varying levels of minerality dependant on their soil type.  The wines from clay-limestone soil with clayey marl were fresh, fruity, and citrusy, while ones from similar soil but older vines were richer and more concentrated.  Sauvignon from a plot with more southeast exposure tasted full of ripe fruit.  I could almost taste the sunlight in it, if sunlight also tasted like stones.  

I said goodbye to Stéphane, after procurring a photo.  
"I don't look very nice," he protested, gesturing to his worn clothes and straw-flecked hair.
"You look great," I answered.  "Will you marry me?"

I didn't actually propose.  Julian might not have been keen on it.

I walked a short distance down the road to my next rendezvous, with Elisa Gueneau of Domaine Alain Gueneau.  She was a beaming, kind-eyed woman with excellent English and a confident manner.  She showed me the old and new production facilities where her family produced their Sancerres.  At Imbibe we sell their elegant and fruity Sancerre rosé, but they make a full range of Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Noirs.  They harvest by machine.  I marveled at the huge machine that moved through the rows plucking bunches, then conveyed them up to troughs to be brought back for sorting and refrigeration prior to fermentation.
We went from the production facility to a separate building containing metal crates full of unlabeled bottles from the current vintage, as well as boxes of labeled wine ready to be picked up by importers and distributors.  

Elisa lined up all the bottles on the counter.  We started with "La Guiberte," a white Sancerre coming from calcareous clay, or "terres blanches."  Clean, mineral, and very fresh, Elisa recommended this one with goat cheese, especially the local crottin de Chavignol.  For contrast, we tried "Les Griottes," which comes from vines planted in stony soil called "caillottes" or "griottes" near the village of Chavignol.  The fruit in this wine was richer and more intense as was the minerality.  The "Cuvée Éloi" was Sauvignon from terres blanches, but from older vines averaging fifty years old.  It had the zesty freshness of "La Guiberte" but more layered and complex.  The rosé was as delicious and fresh as as summer's day, much as I remembered it from tastings at Imbibe.  The Pinots from various terroirs were delicate and powerful at the same time.  

I wished in that moment to only drink Sancerre, to really dig into all the different wines from these two neighbors, Elisa and Stéphane, to try them not just in small tastes but to savor bottles with meals, to parse out the differences between parcels of vines and vintages.  There is such an enormous variance in just one producer's work.  You get a glimpse into the enormity of work it takes to get this juice out of the land, and you see the richness contained in these bottles, the stories and sweat and weather contained in their cellars, and you reduce it all to half an hour of tasting through their "lineup" and casting your judgements based on so little.  

Just one afternoon in Sancerre.  I came to connect in whatever way I can.  I fell in love, and I'll be back as soon and as often as I can.

I had to go back to Bourgueil to meet Catherine Breton.  I was weary and it was almost cruelly, tauntingly beautiful in the village of Sury-en-Vaux.  I wanted to buy bottles of Elisa's fresh and zesty whites, and Stéphane's austere, textured ones, and sit down in a sunny copse with some crottins of goat cheese, and fall asleep in the sun.  I got in my car and drove away, through the tiny centre-ville, where there was an inviting little restaurant with a patio draped in ivy.  Next time I will stay.  Next time I will spend a week in Saumur and Vouvray, and a week in Sancerre, and a week in Muscadet.  Each section of the Loire--central, east, and west, requires at least a week.  A week would just be a starting point.  You could take a month in each section, and only just begin to explore all the wine, natural beauty, and historical significance.  

I drove away, back through the dappled forest, past fields of brown and crispy sunflowers, back onto the wide and sunny toll route.  I rolled the window down and yelled out the window, wind streaming in, knotting my hair.  I gripped the wheel, daring myself not to fall asleep, and drove back to Bourgueil.

Laurent Herlin & Pascal Janvier - Saumur, Bourgueil, & Coteaux du Loir

The shiny black Nissan with its GPS and press-of-a-button ignition was nicer than anything I'd driven.  I didn't tell that to the girl behind the counter of the Angers Enterprise, nor did I tell her I'd never rented a car before.  I white-knuckled the steering wheel through the narrow cobbled streets of Angers, following the prim British GPS to the interstate.  I passed through a toll and drove on, until I hit another toll.  I needed to pay, but I had no idea how.  In a panic I opened the car door, afraid of gouging it on a cement pole, slithered out, and ran back to the honking vehicle behind me.  My broken French quickly trailed off, and I asked if the driver spoke English.  

"Ok, at last stop, they give you a ticket!  Yes?  You put this ticket in here, you pay!"  If he thought the wide eyed American girl tearing back to her abandoned vehicle to follow instructions was a loon, he didn't say so.  I wanted to tell him I was from the American south; we don't have tolls there, and my mind was soup from traversing the Loire all day by train.

The sun was sinking low as I took the exit for Saumur.  I wound up a hill and suddenly a huge chateau of pale limestone rose on my left, turned golden in the sunset light.  Below it the old city of Saumur was hewn out of the same stone, and the Loire river flowed past, a deep tranquil blue.  This river flowed through all the wine regions I loved best--Sancerre, Vouvray, Bourgueil, Chinon, and out into Muscadet and the Atlantic ocean.  I had read of this river for years, of how wine used to be shipped down it hundreds of years ago, of how its moderating effects made the wine regions of the area what they were.  

My Airbnb was around the corner from the castle.  I met my host, a slight, smiling woman with grey bobbed hair and kind eyes.  She made me an omelette with fresh organic mushrooms, another specialty of Saumur besides wine.  The city houses a mushroom museum and holds mushroom festivals, which I hope to attend on my next visit.  I gratefully ate the omelette and salad she mixed up for me, with aged Comte cheese for dessert, and went to wander through the little vineyard planted on the slope by the castle.  I looked out over the water and the sleepy stone city beneath me.  

I rose the next morning for my first appointment in nearby Bourgueil, with biodynamic winemaker Laurent Herlin.  I wound back down the hill, past the chateau, and into the old city of Saumur.  A long straight rode led out of the city, with the river behind a stone wall on my left and quaint limestone buildings with shuttered windows and flower boxes on my right.  Limestone cliffs loomed beyond them, with occasional chateau or caves carved out of them.  The wind stirred the grasses in the river and the sun tried to peak out of the clouds as the fog rose slowly off the river like wraiths. 

Suddenly I was in vineyards.  Rows and rows of trellised vines stretched across gently sloping fields.  Though harvest was looming, there weren't many grapes visible below the vines.  I would later learn frost had wiped out over half the crop in many vineyards in Bourgueil.  
Laurent Herlin was a tall, friendly man with an open demeanor, dressed in stained coveralls.  He strode across the courtyard of his ramshackle farmhouse to shake my hand, and invited me into a barn with soccer flags pinned to the walls, and giant fermentation tanks looming into the rafters.  He spoke at first in French, but when he began see how little of the technical details I was grasping, he switched to English.  He poured me tank samples of his Cabernet Franc, both the young cuvees and one he planned to age for longer in barriques.  He lined up a row of bottles on an upturned barrel and began opening them.  I was especially excited to see a Cabernet Franc petillant natural.  He makes it in tiny quantities and currently doesn't export it, which was a shame for me as it was full of that unmistakable Bourgueil terroir of dirt and flowers and herbs, and I could've drained the bottle if it wasn't mid morning and I didn't have appointments ahead of me.  He invited me to stay for lunch, but I regretfully declined as I had a meeting in about an hour with a winemaker up in Coteaux de Loir.  

I called Pascal Janvier and his wife picked up.  She seemed suspicious of my "rendezvous" and didn't seem to have any idea I was coming.  With my limited French I procured the OK to drive up.  Later I realized I had never heard a definitive answer to my emailed inquiry about the time of my visit, though he had told me the day I suggested was fine.  I wound my way through pastures and tree-lined roads and gently sloping fields.  Stately mansions arose at intervals, and grand trees that boded the entrance to great chateaux.  I passed through a village with a bridge over a winding stream, and stopped at the tabac in its center for a bitter coffee.  I drove on until I saw signs for "Pascal Janvier," and turned off at a narrow road lined with ragged cypress trees.  I felt conspicuous in my shiny black rental car as I pulled into the gravel drive.  A man with dark hair and a weather lined face was pushing a wheelbarrow up the driveway.  I said, "Pascal Janvier?"  "Oui," he replied.  I stammered something about a rendezvous pour une degustation, and he said he would get his femme as she spoke better English.  

Dominique was a slender woman with a serious, lined face and a guarded manner, which relaxed a bit as I was able to explain that I worked in a wine shop that sold several of their Chenins.  I wished dearly that I could speak French fluently.  Then I would be able to disarm them.  I tasted through their brilliant Chenins, the Coteaux du Loir and Jasnières, and some sweeter styles.  The wines dripped stony, luscious acidity, like ripe honey-soaked peaches and stones.  These wines are as ageworthy as any of the great Rieslings of Germany, or red Bordeaux or Burgundy.  Jasnieres wines in particular don't begin to really show their stuff until ten years after the vintage.  I plan on buying at least a case of Pascal's Jasnieres and stashing most of it for the next decade.  Then I'll have incredibly delicious and complex Chenins by the time I'm forty, and from a winemaker I visited.  

Although the wines were transcendent, and the Janviers good people, our language barrier made the visit a bit stunted.  I thanked them for the dégustation and made my escape, heading back down the rutted road and towards a supermarket I'd passed on the way in.  This was no quaint boucherie or market overflowing with local produce, but a chain supermarché with dimly lit linoleum aisles filled with French processed foods.  Still, there were good things to be had, and I filled a basket with cornichons, chicken rillettes, oozy cheese (the cheese selection even at these chain grocery stores puts the tasteless pucks of brie and camembert at American grocery stores to shame), baguette, apples, chocolate, potato chips, and a couple fruity Belgian lambics.  I have a weakness for potato chips in other countries (as well as my own), getting an enormous kick out of all the exotic flavors.  This time I chose chevre and cracked pepper.  
I drove back the way I'd come, turning off at the entrance to a chateau.  Giant trees lined the road, and cars were parked in a field stretching out before the mansion.  I took my picnic into a copse of trees with a view of the chateau, and plopped down in a bed of violets and went to town on some baguette and rillettes.  I scrambled to my feet, hurriedly slurping down the last of the cassis lambic, realizing I needed to hit the road to get back to Bourgueil in time for my meeting with Catherine Breton.  The sun was streaming out from behind the clouds as I left the chateau and wound back to Bourgueil.  I passed through the roundabout with a giant cluster of grapes in a wine glass in the median, and to a town center with a giant wine bottle tipping over, water cascading out in a perpetual Bacchanalian cascade.  

I didn't meet up with Catherine Breton that night.  I had the wrong address written down, which took me to their vineyards and house instead of their winemaking facilities in a warehouse down the road.  The number I had written down rang and rang, so I left a regretful message and crossed my fingers for a rendezvous the next day, even though I was driving out to Sancerre in the morning.  I was weary and flustered, but the sun was streaming across the glossy leaves of the vines and Cabernet Franc grapes hung in thick purple-black clusters beneath them, and all was not lost.

Train Platforms of the Loire Valley

My journey to the Loire started with an early, bleary morning.  I rose at 4 am in the dead stillness of the Parisian apartment my girlfriends and I rented from Air Bnb.  I'd met them seven years earlier when we'd converged on the city for an au pair year.  Several of them I hadn't seen since I'd said goodbye along the banks of the Seine six years ago.  We'd scattered back to our homelands like boomerangs (I shot out to China before coming back to Tennessee) in Geneva, Dublin, London, Atlanta.  Now I was back in France, and my mission was to meet winemakers, but I'd sent out an impulsive query to see who would meet me in Paris beforehand, and was delighted when I was met with a resounding YES from each girl.
The bed and floorboards creaked as I rolled out next to Veronica and gathered my things.  I'd said goodbye  the night before.  We had drunk wine and eaten cheese until around 1 am when, with drooping eyelids, I hugged them all and left them watching Broad City.   I'd decided back in Tennessee to get the 6 am train ticket to Saumur from Paris.  Now it seemed the height of stupidity on roughly three hours of sleep.

I headed down the spiral staircase and into the dark street towards the metro.  As I got down the steps into the station I realized my three-day unlimited pass had expired and I had no coins to buy a ticket.  The subway worker I flagged down to help me clearly hadn't had her morning cafe creme.  She was incredulous that I had no coins and was incapable of making change, and shrugged in exasperation when my bank card didn't work in the machine.  She disappeared behind a metal door.  Panic rose in my throat.  I had to make my train.  I stumbled out of the metro and into a taxi.  We threaded through the dark streets of Paris, me nervously watching the meter since I only had twenty euros in cash.  Despite my stress the luxury of this cab wasn't lost on me.  When I'd lived in Paris as an au pair I'd never dreamed of taking a cab.  The au pair stipend was more pocket money than salary.  I used mine mainly for pints of Leffe and falafels consumed on curbs and riverbanks.

I got my ticket printed out from a machine in Montparnasse and found the platform.  We boarded in the crisp air.  I was leaving Paris, the city I felt I knew.  Though it was vast and I hadn't been there in years, there was still a resonance, memories that lent a familiarity and confidence as I threaded through its passageways.  Now I was going west to wine country, alone. 

I came into Saumur in the grey morning, around 8 am.  As I came into the tiny station and tried to get my phone to pull up internet, I realized I had made a grave error.  My rental car was waiting for me several stations back, in Angers, but I had come to Saumur, where I would be staying the next four nights.  I had fudged the details.  Somehow in the orchestration of the trip months before, late at night at my kitchen table, I conflated Angers and Saumur, and thought the Enterprise-Rent-A-Car was in the same place as my Air bnb.

A taxi would be out of the question in this case.  The next train would come in three hours.  I got a bitter cafe and a croissant at the bakery across the street, then ambled back into the station and out onto the platform in the fresh air.  I wrapped myself in my sweater, brushing off greasy shards of croissant, and lay down on the row of seats.  I dozed fitfully, waking up to sun streaming full on my face.  I was sweating.  When I'd left Paris before dawn I could see my breath.  Now I pulled off both my sweaters with only my linen shirt underneath, looking around for shade to escape sunburn.

I kept coming into the station to watch the platform announced for Angers, to make sure I had the right time, the right place.  I descended the ramp into the station, lugging my heavy bag.  I waited, sitting on my suitcase, reading my book, The History of Love.  A old woman with white hair approached me, asked if this was the train for Angers.  

"Oui, cette train, c'est pour Angers," I assured her.

The train came.  We boarded.  I watched the platform roll away, and give way to houses with tiled roofs, laundry hanging out to dry.  Fields flashed by, little rivers.  We approached another town, and a fairytale chateau could be seen through the trees, with turrets and minnerets.  With each town, I got a sick feeling in my stomach.  Angers should only have been a few stops away, maybe a twenty minute ride.  But as the train ride stretched into thirty minutes, then longer, it became clear I had made another mistake.  The train terminated in Tours.  Weary and distraught, I called the first winemaker on my agenda, Pierre-Jean Sauvion, to tell him I had taken the train in the wrong direction, and I didn't think we could meet up today.

"I am so sorry for you!" he exclaimed.  "You should have just gotten the train to Nantes, and I could have picked you up from the station!"

We agreed to try to sort out another rendezvous in the next couple of days.  I was on the phone with the front desk lady at Enterprise, trying to convince them to hold my automatic-transmission car for me.  I went into the ticket office and tried to make myself understood.

"Je suis aller a Saumur.  Le prochaine train a Saumur...?"  

The woman behind the counter crisply rattled off the times.  I struggled to make my brain comprehend military time in French and reached for a pen and a piece of paper.  

"Uhh, ecris s'il vous plait?"  
17:30
(Moi:) "Ah, 17:30 c'est pour Angers?"
(Madame de Train:)  "Oui madame!"
(Moi:)  Merci beaucoup!

I stepped outside into the bright warmth outside the station.  The greasy croissant and coffee hours earlier wasn't cutting it.  I needed a phone charger.  Maybe there was a cafe nearby where I could get sustenance for myself and my cell.

I came down the cobbled sidewalk with my rolling suitcase, the sun streaming down.  People hustled in and out of the station, boys stood in clusters, laughing and teasing each other.  Everyone was in limbo, waiting for a train or for one of the buses idling outside the station.  In a light-headed limbo I headed toward a square across the street.  Its pathways were made of pale fine gravel my suitcase wheels stalled in, skidding.  I hoisted it up and sat down on a bench.  Beech trees towered overhead and the wind tossed the lacy green leaves like curtains, green and gold in the sun.  
 

I sat in a little cafe and drank another tiny coffee and a sparkling water, my new French regime.  They seemed to be between food services, and I didn't have very much time before I had to make my way back to the station.  
On the train to Angers, the sun still bright in the late afternoon sky, I settled in with my book. charging my phone in the armrest charger.  A whole day lost to trains, threading back and forth across the green fields of the Loire.  The vineyards I yearned to see were somewhere out there, past the chateaus and village clotheslines.