Dany's place is almost on the corner |
Over breakfast we talked to Dany about her
life and what had brought her to Sancerre.
It was not totally clear but she told us she had been in the hotel
business but gave it up because of health issues. She was in the process of doing up her home
and had put in central heating and double glazing, both at some expense she
said. There was much more to do as it
really did feel old and in need of maintenance.
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Sancerre on the hill - light was not good |
One of the reasons for our trip to Sancerre
was a desire to visit the home of Henri Bourgeois who had a New Zealand
connection as he had set up a winery called Clos Henri in Marlborough. In my view the New Zealand Clos Henri wines
are great so I wanted to try his French wines.
He is clearly a big producer in Sancerre and is based in a small village
called Chavignol which is seven kilometres from Sancerre. It is obviously a wealthy area judging by the
main road going through it and the houses.
Henri Bourgeois tasting and admin centre |
Henri Bourgeois is situated next to a church.
This makes sense of the tasting room they have in Marlborough which is a
deconsecrated church in an amazing setting. I had thought we would not be able to do a
tasting but it turned out we could and ended up sampling a range of his
wines. They are so different to his NZ wines but are also
very good. The prices for his French
wines however are comparatively expensive to the NZ wines. According to the person serving us, about 20%
of the wine sold is the Clos Henri wines from NZ. While we were there we saw people buying
whole cases of wine. I am not surprised
because unlike NZ the wine at the shop was about 15% cheaper than in the shops.
I got a bit of surprise when I put our
Saumur address into the GPS as it turned out to be much further away from Sancerre than I
thought. The shortest route was 240kms
and on the back roads it was a four hour journey. On the autoroute it was nearly three hours
but the distance was a bit longer.
We took the back road route simply because
it was more fun. Soon after we left
Chavignol it began to spit and then it rained.
Some weird routes were suggested by Michelle (the GPS) and again I sometimes
ignored her. Regardless it was an interesting
experience doing those routes. There
were surprisingly few cars on them.
When we got past Tours we decided we had
had enough of back roads and after a stop at a rest area or Aire we took the
autoroute which got us to Saumur in no time at all.
We easily found the apartment but parking
was not so easy as the streets were very narrow with limited parking. However, we were able to find a place
temporarily.
Self explanatory |
Chavignol vineyards |
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