Traveling Through Time: Wine and the Renaissance
Chenonceau, Clos Luce and the wine of Tours
Hello! This is the second part of a multi-part series on my time biking the Loire Valley from Blois to Saumur. If you would like to read more about my amateur wine tastings, read ahead! If you would not like to, don’t read, but like it and share it on Facebook anyway because #content. Part I, covering Blois, Chambord, Chaumont Sur-Loire and Amboise, is here.
Wine
Somehow I’ve gone four days in France without mentioning wine at all! My bad. There is so much amazing wine in the Loire Valley, and I got to experience some of it firsthand on my third day of biking. I arrived at the Caves of Pere Auguste after about an hour and a half of biking. Unfortunately, my wine knowledge is at best “beginner” and at worst “American,” so I was coming at it with basically zero knowledge. Luckily, my wine guide Adrien, a member of the Pere Auguste family (great-grandson of the founder) was extremely helpful.
Adrien was more than happy to walk me through the basics of the region, and the wines. The Loire Valley has a great variety of wines — to the west, the Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc grape varieties dominate. To the east, Sauvignon and Gamay reign supreme. In the middle, the Cot grape (Malbec) also grows. The Caves of Pere Auguste are perfectly situated in the middle, allowing the vineyards to grow grapes from all of these different varieties!
The wine was amazing — crisp and dry Sauvignons, rich and bold Cabernets. I picked up a bottle of Touraine Chenonceaux (Sauvignon), and left feeling properly educated and hydrated. After a nice, relaxing lunch by the banks of the Loire, I was feeling very refreshed and ready to see the next castle.
Chenonceau
Then it was on to Chenonceau. I have to admit, by this point in the trip I was feeling a little chateau’d out. I’d seen four chateaus in two days already, and I mean — I’m sure Chenonceau was going to be beautiful, but how many more chateaus could I really see?
Then — oh man, Chenonceau blew my mind! Was it the fact that I was starting to get used to this biking thing? Maybe it was the full and refreshing lunch I had? Maybe I was still drunk from the wine tasting? Who cares! Chenonceau is so cool, and so beautiful.
The white stone arches of the castle rise gracefully out of the river Cher. At the top, the castle coalesces seamlessly into a beautiful, fairy tale top, with beautiful spires and clean, soft lines. The whole thing looks like it came straight from the Disney Imaginarium, but it is real and astonishing.
The interior of the castle is excellent as well — as I walked through the castle I could imagine the servants scurrying about to-and-fro, buzzing with life as they moved to accommodate every whim of their noble masters. Of the nobles in the castle, by far the most important were Diane and Catherine. Chenonceau placed me in the middle of Diane and Catherine’s struggle for power — originally a tower Diane had specifically asked the king to confiscate for her, Diane occupied it for twelve years until Henry’s death, at which point Catherine seized it from her.
Everywhere in the castle there are traces of Diane and Catherine. Catherine’s portrait adorns Diane’s bedroom, while Diane’s portrait is up one floor further. One of the upper floors celebrates Catherine’s daughters — the future queens of France, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire — while Diane of Poitiers never bore Henry any children at all. Still, Diane had the king’s ear until the king passed. When Diane first acquired the castle, she made plans to build the arched bridge gallery over the river Cher — the distinctive arches over the river. However, Henry died before the project could be finished, and when Catherine confiscated Chenonceau, only the bridge was finished. Catherine examined the work in progress, and essentially decided that as much as she disliked Diane, that was actually a good idea — she finished Diane’s planned work.
All across the castle you can see the interlaced symbols of Henry (an H) and Catherine (Two interlocked Cs). However, when those two are interwoven, you can also see, presumably accidentally, the D of Diane of Poitiers. This must have driven Catherine furious when she noticed it, and amused Diane to no end.
The saga of Chenonceau’s women doesn’t end with Diane of Poitiers or Catherine de Medici either. One of the last owners of Chenonceau was Louise Dupin, in the late eighteenth century. Madame Dupin is one of the most famous patrons of the Age of Enlightenment — her salon at Paris was the most famous in the city, with regular members including Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau.
When the French Revolution came, the salons were all finished. Noble’s castles were razed to the ground (such as the Chateau of Amboise) and the nobility themselves were executed or fled across the border. In this environment, Madame Dupin stayed in Chenonceau. When the Revolution came to Chenonceau, they brought with them the fire and knives they had brought to all of the rest of France. But, the local populace adored her so much, and defended her so fiercely, that the Jacobins were forced to turn away. Madame Dupin lived to a ripe old age, and Chenonceau survived the Revolution unscathed. Truly, a woman worthy of Catherine and Diane.
Clos Luce
I’ll be real — by the time I reached the Clos Luce, I was pretty burned out. I was coming off the high of Chenonceau, another hard day of biking, and the horrifying realization that I had gone through a day without my typical cup of coffee, so I was crashing hard. My groggy, half-delirious state means that it’s even more impressive that the Clos Luce impressed me as much as it did.
Francis I, as noted here, did not do anything by half. So, when the king made the decision to become a patron of the arts, it is completely in character that he went straight to the greatest living artist of them all — Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci spent the last three years of his life in Amboise, only steps away from the royal castle (legend says that the underground passage under Clos Luce leads directly to Amboise, so the king and his scientist could meet in secret.
The best parts of the Clos Luce are the exploration of Leonardo da Vinci’s mind. The museum has carefully reconstructed his studio workshops, and, from da Vinci’s drawings, life-scale physical models of his most insane inventions. These included (again, from the beginning of the 16th century): A tank, a helicopter, a moveable bridge and a paddleboat. None of these things would happen until the late 19th century at earliest. At the Clos Luce, you can see what insane genius looks like firsthand.
The most interesting revelation for me was just how thoroughly he was a scholar of everything. For instance, he was one of the few Renaissance men to actually pay attention to botany. Many of his contemporaries wrote extensively on the metaphysical nature of plants and their theoretical place in the universe, but da Vinci actually did the research. He read ancient texts on botany, he spoke to midwives, witch doctors and alchemists, he did the real leg work to really understand how plants work, exist and thrive. The ultimate Renaissance Man never rested on his laurels, but always dove with full curiosity into the next thing ahead of him.
Montlouis-sur-Loire, Vouvray and Tours
When I woke up the next day, the rain was pouring down over Amboise. This was obviously disappointing, but I had been expecting rain all day for the past three days, so frankly it was overdue. The rain didn’t deter anyone at my first destination — Amboise’s Sunday food market.
The market was packed with people and vendors selling excellent local foods — meats, cheeses, produce and sweets, as well as other vendors hawking clothes, shoes or leatherware. I quickly assembled a picnic lunch of bread, sausage, goat cheese and apricots, then set off on my journey.
The next leg of my journey from Amboise to Tours was pretty sedate, with no castles to see on the way or at the destination. With that in mind, I decided to fill the time by further exploring something I knew nothing about — wine!
Specifically, Chenin Blanc wine. Like I said, I don’t know very much about wine, but whenever I’ve seen a good Chenin Blanc wine on a menu, I’ve come away from the table happy. I found out in my research that some of the best Chenin Blanc in the world comes from the Loire Valley, specifically two areas — Montlouis-sur-Loire, and Vouvray. These two towns are across the river from each other, maybe two miles apart. Both of these cities have been producing their own, different variations on Chenin Blanc for the past five hundred years. (Technically Montlouis-sur-Loire was part of Vouvray until the early 20th century, but the wines have always been distinct). So, knowing this, I knew I had to try them!
First up was Montlouis-sur-Loire, where the Cave des Producteurs offer a free audioguided tour of the cellars — dark, atmospheric and fascinating. The wine itself was best dry, and had a pronounced chalky, earthy tone to it.
Next was Vouvray. Getting to Vouvray was an adventure in and of itself, because I had to cross a highway in order to get there. That hair-raising adventure safely survived, I arrived at Vouvray. It was 1:00 pm, which meant that everything in the town was closed — France as a whole is basically nonfunctional from 12:00–2:00 pm, except for the restaurants of course. This was perfect, though, because it gave me time to open up my picnic lunch and start eating.
After a refreshing picnic lunch, it was time for me to mosey over to the Vouvray cellars. I had a wonderful tasting with an extremely professional and helpful guide. I preferred the Montlouis version, but there was something appealing about the fruity character of Vouvray. Anyways, I got a bottle of each. With two bottles in my saddlebags and a third in my suitcase, I felt fairly sure that if I was detained by French immigration I could reasonably make the case to them that, even if I wasn’t French, I was at least trying my best.
Tours
Leaving the two wine towns in the background, I headed on towards Tours. Now, it’s worth noting at this point that Blois is a fairly small town, and Amboise is even smaller. In addition, I hadn’t really spent much time in either of those cities — basically just breakfast and dinner. Most of my previous few days had been spent biking on the road, passing small villages like Huisseau-sur-Cosson and Artigny, tiny areas where I saw almost no one. The majority of my human contact was saying “bonjour” to a passing cyclist or runner. I could hear cars coming from half a mile away, and had plenty of time to steer off the side of the road when I could feel a car coming.
All of which to say I was pretty shocked when I saw Tours. Tours is a large town of over 130,000, complete with actual traffic, suburbs, so many people and noise everywhere. In my ride from Blois to Chambord I felt like a king. Now, I felt like a hermit emerging from the wilderness, or a peasant making his first trip to the city — awed, overwhelmed and a little nervous about all the people around me. I fought down the urge to make the sign of the cross and scuttle into the hotel.
And why would a village peasant or a secluded hermit make the trip to Tours? Quite possibly to see the Basilica of St. Martin of Tours, one of the most famous saints in the Christian world.
I felt like a pilgrim as I made my way down to St. Martin’s Basilica — overwhelmed, footsore and weary. To add to the authenticity, the sky suddenly opened up, pouring down rain for the second time that day. As gushing water soaked my shoes and threatened to overwhelm my umbrella, I considered the nearest doorways enviously, the proverbial “any port in a storm.” But my newly discovered pilgrim’s attitude only stiffened facing adversity, and I powered on until I stumbled into St. Martin’s, soaking wet.
The Basilica is huge, open and powerful. Inside, it bears testament to St. Martin’s life. Born to pagans in Hungary, St. Martin came to France as a soldier for the Roman Empire. A soldier, conscientious objector (he refused to fight during his service) and proselytizer, St. Martin was Bishop of Tours, converted the majority of the Touraine area during his life, and established the first French monastery.
St. Martin’s most famous action came as a Roman soldier. One evening he saw a beggar, freezing to death in the cold. Martin cut his cloak in half and gave it to the beggar. This act of generosity would come to be characteristic of Martin — from his advocating on behalf of the Priscillian heretics, to his constant efforts to free prisoners. He was a well-loved bishop and saint, and the Basilica feels perfectly placed in Tours.
As I left the Basilica, the rain cleared. The clouds parted, revealing a beautiful evening sun as I walked back into Tours.
That’s all for part 2! Stay tuned for part 3, covering Vilandry and Azay-Le-Rideau.