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.