Wine Tourism: Wine Tasting Around Tours

I just got back from France, where I got to visit the Loire Valley. It’s a must visit for its castles, goat cheese and wine. 

Touraine Wine Tasting

The Loire Valley is shaped by France’s longest river, the Loire, and is a long, diverse touristic and wine region, which spans from Orleans, Chartres, and Sancerre in the east, which are south and southwest of Paris, to Nantes where the Loire meets the Atlantic all the way on the western side. All along the way, you can visit the country’s most beautiful castles and cathedrals while tasting local food and wine. It’s particularly well-known for its goat cheeses, fresh-water fish dishes, pork rillettes and fruit tarts, especially around Tours (where we get the term Touraine as a wine region while anything on the menu in Tours that says Tourangelle means it’s made with or features local products like its rillettes). It’s also a great place to bicycle from castle to castle or vineyard to vineyard along the Loire or its tributaries. When you go to France every July like we do, you see how much everyone still loves the Tours de France, so bicycling is still a great passion as well as an environmentally friendly, practical way of transport for locals. 

In terms of wine, the Loire is just as diverse, interesting and beautiful. Going East to West, you have Sauvignon Blanc regions like Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé. Further south along the Loire, you have the Auvergne region, which is dominated by Gamay. Going west to places like Valencay and Cheverney, you start to have a mixed production of Sauvignon Blanc and other whites like Chardonnay, Chenin (sometimes called Pineau de la Loire) and a bit of Romorantin along with light reds like Gamay, Pinot Noir and Pineau d’Aunis. Then you get to the Touraine regions east of Tours like Vouvray and Montlouis-sur-Loire, which focus on sweet, sparkling, demi-sec and dry Chenin. West of Tours, you start getting to the Cabernet Franc dominated regions like Bourgueil, Chinon and Saumur-Champigny with more Chenin all the way to the Anjou region (around Angers), with the highly acclaimed Savennieres appellation. Anjou is where you might find some light reds too like Gamay and Grolleau in addition to both types of Cabernet. Finally, around Nantes you’re in Muscadet country. In addition, wine from Haut-Poitu around Poitiers and the Vendome like the appellation of Jasnieres can also be included in the Loire Valley wine region. There are tons of smaller sub-regions and appellations that I haven’t mentioned, so there’s even more to discover. 

Our trip 2026

This time around, we needed to meet family a bit south of Poitiers. There’s not much of a wine region there, being north of Cognac and Bordeaux and south of the Loire. However, they do produce some Pineau des Charentes not far from where we stayed, so I tried a bottle. Besides whatever I could find at the local supermarket with family meals, most of my wine geek tasting wanderlust was satisfied while we stayed 5 days in Tours before family gatherings. 

In previous visits, I had done tastings in Muscadet, Saumur-Champigny, and Chinon while staying in Nantes or further East close to Cheverney. This time, we decided to stay right in the middle of the Loire in Tours. To make it more interesting for the whole family, I essentially paired tastings with castle visits. If you have children, Tours is only an hour away from the Futuroscope theme park too while Puy du Fou theme park is about 2 hours away. Tours itself boasts a lovely Cathedral, a nice old town with lively aperitif and food spots at the Place Plumereau and along the banks of the Loire river. There are some nice cave à manger, which are wine shops/wine bars to both buy, drink and eat all in one place. We checked out Le Tryptique near Place Plumereau. It’s the perfect place to try local wines with local rillettes, rillons, cheeses and paté. There are also some wine shops in the region such as the local chain Les Belles Caves . I went to the Vinoteque Tours though, which has a lot of the top local producers. However, we mostly used Tours as a base to visit all the nearby castles and vineyards, which mostly range from 15-60 minutes away.

Being jetlagged and at the back-end of the heat-wave, we decided to visit Azay-le-Rideau first. It’s often listed as one of the top chateaux to visit and is one of the favorites of my wife’s family. Although it’s one of the smallest of the top castles in the region, it stands out for its early Renaissance elegant architecture juxtaposed with the Indre river that it sits on. If it were a wine, it would be something like a Burgundy: light, elegant and pretty. They have a great wine shop a block from the Information Center and a local winery tasting room at the exit of the castle called La Boutique du Domaine Paget and another one called Château de l’Aulée a few minutes drive away, but the sub-appellation of Touraine Azay-le-Rideau is not the most sought after, so I skipped the visit with my exhausted kids wanting to go back to sleep at the hotel. 

The next day we went to Chinon. It’s one of the oldest castles and has an incredible history connected to the Knights Templar and Joan of Arc. Between the parking and the entrance of the castle is the wine shop/tasting room of Charles Joguet and the vineyards and tasting room of Couly-Dutheil. Both are well-known producers of Chinon. There’s also Domaine Plouzeau, who have a nearby tasting room in a troglodytique, or carved out, cave dwelling. There are some old troglodytique caves you can visit in the region too. I did Domaine Bernard Baudry in the past. Their cellar is also a carved out cave. It’s highly recommended. However, this time I decided to head to the old town of Chinon to taste at Domaine Breton’s tasting room. It’s a great place to taste because they have both Bourgueil & Chinon reds and Vouvray whites, being the result of the marriage of two wine families from each region. This way, if you don’t have a lot of time to taste, you can get a picture of the overall region in one place. Plus, they have some Pet-Nat and Cab Franc and Grolleau rosés, which don’t always make it out of the region that are worth buying to drink during your stay when the weather is warm. The overall quality is also great for the price.

During the summer, the castle of Chinon also hosts wine fairs of local producers once a week on Thursdays. I should also mention that many of the castles in the Loire have spaces to picnic in, so you can buy some local cheeses and rillettes along with one of the wines you pick up at a tasting room to enjoy on the grounds. The restaurant La Table des Copains was good, affordable and right at the entrance of the Chinon castle if you’d rather have something more formal.

The following day, we just drove 15 minutes away to Vouvray, which was the main attraction for me since I had never visited the appellation before. It helped me to understand Chenin and why they produce all the different styles: sweet to dry/still to sparkling. Basically, it allows them to hedge their bets on the weather with certain years being better for one or the other. I chose to go to Domaine Huet, one of the benchmarks in the region. The tasting was also free, which was also a nice change compared to all the California and Bordeaux tastings I had been doing recently.  All the tastings in the Loire were free or no more than 5 euros. The wines themselves were so affordable too, especially the reds. The Loire is actually the biggest producer of whites in France, and if anything, there are more expensive, cult whites than reds. Back to Vouvray, there’s a tiny restaurant called La Haut with a terrace view of the local church about a 7 minute walk from Domaine Huet, which was a nice way to end our morning in Vouvray with lunch. Nothing too fancy, but it hit the spot. 

We continued east from Vouvray to visit Chambord, which for many is the #1 castle to visit in the region. It’s big, majestic and royal. If it were a wine, it would be like a Bordeaux. Chambord also features its own wine shop/tasting room to taste local Cheverney wines, but I resisted the temptation. The heat called for ice cream instead. 

On the way back to Tours, however, we stopped in Montlouis-sur-Loire. There you can find Francois Chidaine’s boutique shop and tasting room. It sells all of their portfolio along with other top local wines and some other wines from France and even Spain. Tastings of Chidaine’s wines are free. His Chenin wines are affordable and top quality but different in style compared to Domaine Huet. Right outside the shop is a bench with a splendid view facing the Loire river. Since the shop also features some food products, bring a baguette and buy some local products to go with a bottle you purchase there to picnic by the river. Also really close by are the Amboise Castle, where Leonardo DaVinci is entombed, and a little bit further is Chenonceau Castle, which is my favorite castle in the region. It has great gardens like Villandry, it’s right in the middle of the river (the Cher) and elegant in design like Azay-le-Rideau, and it has an interesting history and royal connections like Chambord and Chinon. An honorable mention for castles to visit is Blois, which features a night time lightshow. 

I wish I could’ve visited more wineries, but I reached the limit of what my family can stand. 

Winery & Tasting Notes

Here are some notes about the producers and wines from the tasting visits and a few other wines I drank from the region. I still never felt I had a long enough time to give many a fair rating, but my tasting notes give my overall first impressions. 

Domaine Breton Tasting 

Two wine families brought together by marriage. One from Bourgueil and the other from Vouvray. Now their children run the winery. Biodynamic. Native yeasts. Prices range 12 to 30 Euros per bottle. By coincidence, our Brazilian server Sabrina had worked for a few years in Chile in Pirque with Haras de Pirque and Alamaviva.

2024 PetNat VSIG Elle est pas bulle, la vie? – Not much nose but the palate is light, fresh and citrusy. A touch spicy. Fun to drink. Just 11% alcohol. 

2023 La Dilettante Brut (traditional method) – some toasty and other yeasty notes on the notes and even more on the back end of the palate with spice. Plus acid. Much less fruit than the Pet-Nat. 

2024 Le Chenin Vouvray – leesy and floral on the nose with white peachy palate. Medium-light body with medium acid. Easy to like..

2024 Les Pierres Rousses Vouvray – Silex soils. 12 months barrel age. More body. Lots of salinic minerality and yeasty notes with the fruit and floral notes in the background but still riper and bigger especially on the palate. A touch of oak spice but not much. Quite complex and delicious but not too heavy.

2024 Le Grolleaux – Floral and fruity nose. Dark berry fruit. Same on the palate. It’s light and fruity but more on the dark side. No major tannins. Low acid. Low alcohol. Should be a crowd pleaser for those who want lighter wines. They list it as a light red and rosé. 

2025 Trinch Bourgueil – Dark red fruit with spice and mild herbal notes. Licorice. There are still some light tannins but still drinkable on its own but should be quite versatile with food. 

2025 Les Beaux Monts Chinon–  Deep limestone soils. This is more austere and structured. More obvious pyrazine. More acid and minerality. More tannic. But you still get good dark berry fruit. 

2023 Nuits d’Ivresse Bourgueil – Natural wine with tiny bit of sulfite added at the end. Tiny bit of barrel age. More like the Trinch in flavor profile but more structured, more body, more tannic and darker fruit. Less obvious pyrazine.

2021 Les Perrières Bourgueil – Almost 100 year old vines. 24 months in barrel and then 2 years in bottle. Fullest of the Cab Franc so far but still an elegant texture up front which becomes the most tannic on the back end. Dark berry fruit. There’s stony minerality here. Medium-acid. Mild pyrazine. Still needs aging. 

2022 Clos Sénéchal Bourgueil – Little more pyrazine on the nose than Les Perrieres but the palate is more plush, ripe and elegant with present but silky tannins. Juicier. More approachable now than the Les Perrieres. I bought this one to share with family. 

2024 La Ritournelle Bourgueil Rosé – There’s a watermelon and red fruit aspect to it like a typical Rosé from Provence but you get a touch of the herbal and savory side of Cab Franc on the nose and back end. The fruit is a bit darker and the body fuller too, but it’s still a light and easy wine. Medium+ acid. 

Domaine Huet Vouvray Tasting 

30 hectares, biodynamic, 1.5 km from the Loire. Haut Lieu = deep soil with brown clay for easy drinking wine. Clos du Bourg (6 hectares) = shallow soil on top of tuffeau bedrock. Southern exposure. Le Mont (9 hectares) = lots of Silex. Southern exposure. Botrytis is rare. Only 3 times in the last 30 years.

2019 Petillant Brut – Traditional method. Don’t produce every vintage. Blend of 3 vineyards. 5 years on lees. This varies. Dosage by sweet wine. Being a “Petillant” means it has less pressure than Champagne (about half). Fine bubbles. Some yeasty and floral notes on the nose. The palate is electric. High acid. Long minerally finish. Easy to drink. Creamy and foamy up front but the acidity and saltiness last long.  

2023 Le Haut-Lieu Sec 5g of residual sugar. Stainless steel fermentation and short aging in used old wood, so aging happens mostly in bottle. Nose is savory and floral but the palate is round, slightly sweet. Lots of fruit. Rich. Easy to drink. Medium-low acid. 13% alcohol. 

2024 Le Haut-Lieu Sec – Nose is a lot fruitier and floral than the 2023. More acidity and savory on the palate. They actually allow more residual sugar to balance out the acidity despite tasting less sweet than the 2023. 

2023 Clos du Bourg Demi-Sec 16g of residual sugar. They recommend this with Asian foods. The nose is actually more savory with fruit opening up with air. Minerally. But obviously the palate is full and round and sweet up front but you still get the salinity. They say the sweetness will decline with age. 

2015 Le Haut-Lieu Demi-Sec – Color obviously darker. Some honey. Some savory and slightly bitter tertiary notes. Still some floral. Lighter and less up front sugar. It’s more integrated in the whole process from mouth to swallow. 

2025 Le Mont Moelleux – They only produced sweet wine this year. They say it’s one of the greatest vintages. 70g of residual sugar. Opulent. Full. Ripe. But there’s acidity and minerality to help balance it out. It makes your mouth water still but still the sweetness dominates. Long long finish. Needs aging. They say Chenin is versatile. It likes cold weather for the dry and demi-sec while it likes the heat for sweet wines. 

2018 Le Mont Moelleux – 60g residual sugar. This has a more complex nose. Flinty notes. More savory nose. While the palate you feel less acidity. It’s lighter than the 2025 at this stage. You feel the sugar more with less acid but it’s more spread out. 

2006 Clos du Bourg Moelleux Premier Trie – Special selection with a bit of botrytis. Opened 5 days ago. Darkest of course. Nose has a savory and earthy side with tertiary notes. More honey. The palate is so refined at this point. Has more of a sense of lightness despite the intensity. Has the most balance of sweetness, acidity and salty notes with great length. 

Francois Chidaine Tastings 

La Cave Insolite Boutique and tasting just 10 minutes from Amboise Castle and Chenonceau is a little further. On the other side of the Loire from Vouvray. Their shop has all their wines plus some other big names in the region, the Rhone, Languedoc, the Spanish wines they produce and other artisanal products. Biodynamic. Located in Montlouis-Sur-Loire, they produce wines from there and Vouvray, but they can’t call their wines Vouvray if they’re vinified in Montlouis-Sur-Loire, so they’re labeled Vin de France. This has been the case since 2014.  In addition, they have an entry level Touraine line and Chenin d’Ici from multiple places. The prices are all reasonable. Their top wines were only 33 euros for current vintages.

2019 Pétillant Vin de France – 100% Chenin Blanc (Pineau de Loire). Traditional Method. This usually gets at least 36 months sur lattes but they told me 44 months. This is from Vouvray but vinified in Montlouis. Floral nose. Super fresh and high acid. Perfect for the summer. Green apples. You get a savory, mineral side from the clay-chalk soils. There’s also a wooly note I get from Chenin sometimes. Great for the summer. 

2024 Les Bournais Montlouis – Soil is clay with lots of limestone. Dry. Fresh, light but long and with lots of chalky salinity. A Chenin in a Chablis like style. 

2023 Les Choisilles Montlouis – Dry wine. Silex over clay soil with a warmer climate than the Les Bournais. More ripeness of course. Spicier. Feels like more alcohol. But still lots of acidity and salinity with smokiness from the silex. 

2020 Les Tuffeaux Montlouis – They call this Tendres to mean demi-sec but there’s a lot less residual sugar compared to the Domaine Huet demi-sec which was at 16g residual sugar. This is only 3g residual sugar. So of course it’s lighter in feel than the Domaine Huet. Ripe red apple fruit more than sweet. But there’s still the savory, chalky mineral notes. 

Other Loire Wines Tasted  

NV Pineau des Charentes Bertrand Tradition Blanc – The only non-Loire Valley wine here, but I wanted to mention it if you’ve never tried this genre of wine. This Cognac producer grows Montils, Sémillon, Colombard, Sauvignon Blanc and Gris, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon to make a white and red version of Pineau des Charentes. It’s made by adding Cognac to fresh partially fermented grape must to act as a mutage (to stop the fermentation) leaving residual sugar. 17% alcohol. 12 months in oak barrels. Floc de Gascogne would be the Armagnac equivalent of this. Macvin in the Jura or types of Mistela (Vin de liqueur in French) in Spain have similar techniques. The nose starts off herbal then quickly to floral and honey notes. Mild vanilla. The palate is round medium+ body and easy to drink with the sweetness masking the alcohol except a little bit in the throat. But it’s not cloying, especially with food. It’s low acid and not as fruity as say a Sauternes, but it serves similarly well with foie gras or blue cheese. 

2022 Bernard Baudry Les Grézeaux Chinon – Compared to the Breton Clos Sénéchal tasted next to it, this is super soft and light, and more about fruit and floral notes while the Breton has more acidity and tannic structure with slightly darker fruit and slightly more pyrazine, but both are elegant Loire Cab Franc. The Baudry felt more aged than the Breton but not in terms of tertiary notes but in terms of structure. I think I prefer the La Croix Boissée cuvee more than this though.  

2021 Bernard Baudry Les Mollieres Chinon – This is a fruity, light, easy drinking Chinon but with its savory vegetal side of Cab Franc well integrated too. Lots of sediment

2024 Delaporte Chavignol Sancerre  – From what I can gather, this is a blend of several of their large 50 plot estate vineyards in Chavignol, which have all the types of soil you can find in Sancerre: Clay and limestone soils like Caillotes (with hard pebble limestone soil), Terres Blanches (Kimmeridgian white marl soil) and Silex (flint). They have other cuvees like Silex and Monts Damnés (with more Terres Blanches) to highlight more specific terroir. Stainless steel fermented and aged on lees. The nose starts off with floral, fruity and leesy notes. A touch of pyrazine in the background. The palate is surprisingly fuller than most Sauvignon Blanc but round, medium-low in acid and elegant. Some Loire Valley Sauvignon Blancs emphasize acid and minerality while this is about texture and fruit. There’s also a long spicy, smoky and rocky finish rather than a salinic minerality. This feels more like an emphasis on clay and silex soils too although it’s a mix of vineyards. Nicely done nonetheless. 92

2023 Thibaud Boudignon Anjou Blanc – 100% Chenin Blanc. One of the new stars in the Loire, making wine from Savennières and Anjou. Clay-schist soil. Low intervention with native yeasts. 12 months on lees in all or mostly used wood containers of different sizes. No battonage. This is so elegant and refined but also a wine for those who appreciate minerality and acidity. The nose is all about salinic minerality with some floral and yogurty leesy notes. The palate is so silky but also so light, it glides over the palate and the finish is long and salty with plenty of acidity. Not a lot of overt ripe fruit at the moment, but with food, I think the fruit would shine more. But the texture, length and acidic/mineral structure gives it potential to improve. Really impressed. 93+

2012 Domaine FL (Fournier Longchamps) Savennières Roche-aux-Moines – 100% Chenin Blanc. Roche-aux-Moines is one of the most prestigious vineyards in Savennieres, which is one of the smaller appellations of the Loire. Roche-aux-Moines is also next to one of the most prestigious vineyards in the whole wine world, Nicolas Joly’s Coulée de Serrant. Wine has been grown in both since the Middle Ages, most likely by monks, hence the name referring to monks.Their plot is mostly rocky, schist soil on a steep soil overlooking the Loire. Aged in about 15% new wood. No malolactic. Organic. This shows its age in color  with some oxidative notes on the nose. The floral notes and citrus appear with more air. Lots of yellow apple on the palate. Round, lovely mouthfeel. Salty, rocky minerality and acidic finish. There’s a wooliness that makes me think of Chenin. More oxidative on the nose while the palate is younger and more exciting with electric acidity. If the nose was less oxidative, maybe I rate this higher but the palate is great. 93 

2024 Domaine Daridan Cour-Cheverny VV Romorantin – This is an uncommon varietal except in Cour-Cheverny, where it is the only permitted grape. Some white floral notes with savory herbal notes in the nose. The palate is also quite salty with medium+ acid which lingers quite a while on the palate. Light texture with a medium-light body. Not the fruitiest white, but more fruit comes out with savory food. Sort of like a lighter, simpler Chenin from the area. 89

2022 Domaine Angelliaume Chinon VV Cabernet Franc – Fairly typical baked green pepper pyrazine notes mixed in well with dark fruit on the nose. Medium-bodied. Medium acid. More dark fruit on the palate. Mild oak spice influence. Chalky tannins. Medium alcohol. 89

2024 Domaine des Hauts Noëlles Pinot Noir – The label is a bit confusing because it says produced in Brittany on the front but on the back it says Val de Loire IGP with a story about a 6th Century Breton King Chonoo who loved his vineyard around Nantes, which used to be the capital of Brittany but is now technically part of a different political region in France and part of the Loire Valley wine region. So they’re including wines from the Nantes area as part of historical Brittany but technically not today’s governmental Brittany to label it as Breton wine, which is a bit deceiving but expected for a wine in a Breton tourist shop. The producer, Dominique and Philippe Chon (perhaps related to this 6th Century king?), is located in Le Loroux-Bottereau, which is just east of Nantes, and probably in the Muscadet wine region of the Loire. Obviously it can’t be labeled Muscadet as a Pinot Noir, hence “Val de Loire.” The nose is shy at first but opens up some to medium-low intensity red fruit and slightly floral notes. The palate also took time to open up and got better with savory food, but overall it was just OK. It’s light in color, body and alcohol but there’s still not a lot of fruit. There’s some herbal greenness to it. Perhaps from some stems or lack of ripeness but the fruit is also more on the cherry, dark red fruit side with medium-low acidity, so you don’t have enough tartness nor ripe fruit to make it more enticing. Don’t get any oak notes. Anyway, I didn’t expect too much from a Breton tourist shop wine, but it’s generally varietally correct and not too far from Cab Franc based Loire brasserie wines 25 years ago when they were less ripe and simple.