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The Spirit of Loire ValleyA Week in Touraine FranceBy Tom Hodgman
We are five minutes drive to Chateau Chaumont, where it sits humpty-dumpty on a steep cliff above the sandy tracery of the Loire River. It’s a remarkable setting. The chateau name, from “Mont Chauvre,” Mount Baldy, matches the chateau’s severe façade and dungeon-like towers with steep-pitched gothic wings. There are splendid chateau grounds, an ancient arboretum, and a drawbridge for the great stone house. Within, the footfalls of slippers from the king’s mistress of the 16th century echo with the boot-falls of a sugar tycoon of 19th.
Love Shack
The reveries of saints and lovers fade in shadow as we explore another side of medieval history, the Loches dungeons. The dungeons are a formidable reminder of the concept of power in an absolutist state. A quote remains discernible on one cell wall where Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan was prisoner (1504-1508). He carved in Italianized French, “Celui qui (net pas contan)” (He here who is not happy). Our guide mercifully freed us for lunch somewhere into the crooked lanes of Loches, nestled beside a meandering river and rolling countryside of vineyards. Beholders
Our evening mission, a gourmet dinner in a cave, contrasts in form and function though it is rather on a palatial scale as well. That evening’s troglodyte restaurant is carpeted, chandeliered and elegantly appointed affair. We are seated as royalty at a great oak table next to a roaring wood fire whose chimney pipe broaches the ceiling 30 feet overhead. Jester begin! Back to School
Mining with the tongue
Photos courtesy of T. Hodgman and France-OTBP http://www.traveloffthebeatenpath.com/ OFF THE BEATEN PATH, LLC |
TM
On the terrace, a group of hotel
patrons lavish over appetizers and champagne. We five new arrivals settle
into our rooms above for a six-night stay in this 2nd empire (19th c) villa
in France, near Tours. This isn’t the only chateau we’ll see, but it is to
be a personal and singular island of serenity. I watch as the patio revelers then collect by the edge of the potager,
the hotel’s vegetable garden. The chef crouches before them picking a
handful of tiny, ruby-like strawberries. He remarks, “They are for the
children.” though he smiles and pops one in his mouth. “Yes!.” Somehow on
cue, a rooster crows from a red-tiled roof of a farmhouse across the fields,
and the heat appears to dissipate. I lie back and doze for a moment.
Christy, our guide, has only just
described the importance of ceremony in relationships in France, personal
and professional. She is our link to discover on this tour, off the beaten
track, which is both the trip’s environ and her company’s name. Christy will pilot us to the best of the royal
chateaux in this region of Loire River, to taste its bounty and sample its
style. This is France’s very appellation for tower, the Touraine.
As evening falls, our appetites
whetted by history, gardens and walking, we are led to a local establishment
below the chateau where the enchantment of Touraine cuisine begins with an
aperitif. There comes next a fierce inclination to really, slow, down. Our
guide offers her chief advice, “It’s vacation!” Yes, and so with this matter
of fact my three travel companions and I savor even more deeply the many
metaphors of freshness that give this region its name as the “garden of
France”. Touraine is a paradise of
diversity in creatures of river, forest, field and yard along with its
generous assortment of vegetables. A tour companion asks Christy, “Does
everyone eat this well at home in France?” “Not every day.” she contends,
but the freshness and seasonality of ingredients are fundamentals shared
with all home-cooking.
The drive to the village Loches, the
next morning, whisks us by sprouting wheat fields, isolated hunting chateaux
and through forests of willow and beech. The central Loire region is split
by 5 prime tributaries and several smaller rivers that feed the principal
artery of the Loire River. In Loches, which hovers over the Indre River we
are treated to the Logis Royal, a building
which could best be described as a royal love shack. Technically, this is
the first chateau actually occupied by a king of France in the Loire Valley
as a principal residence. It was during late medieval times (1420’s). Along
with the Logis, this grand assembly of structures holds remnants of earlier
time built for civil defense and prisoners. It’s a perfect historical start
where Charles VII became the unwitting godfather of the French Renaissance.
He also tended here to his mistress, Agnès Sorel. She was renowned for her
bold sense of fashion and unassailable poise and here remains enshrined in
effigy depicted pregnant in white marble with pillows being fluffed by tiny
angels. An alter-ego of sorts, Saint Joan of Arc, had also bowed humbly
before the “gentle dauphin” Charles, in the adjacent room of the Logis.
Joan’s saintly reunion with the king occurred after her stunning victory
over the English at Orleans, 25 miles from here at the tender age of 14. In
the process, the royal Valois lineage was established in the Touraine and
accounts for the presence of many of the other chateaux we will see.
Beauty is difficult to define, as we
know, but we are anxious to understand its essence as we approach Chateau
Chenonceau along a shaded boulevard. This residence took form almost
exclusively under female hands; Madame Briçonnet at first, then Diane de
Poitiers and Catherine de Medici in their time. It was later shielded from
destructive French revolutionaries by a Madame Dupin. In form and history,
this great building, distinguishes many elements of beauty; pride, vanity,
ambition, and the delicacy of piety. They form an exquisite balance, a
luxury of detail, and a symmetry of shape. That is Chenonceau, floating a
swan on an unhurried river by gardens of Elysium. 
From the start, we had relied on our
guide’s rendering of the menus which, not only being in French, are
well-basted in gastronomic allegory. Perhaps that is why I note a certain
reluctance during the next afternoon’s departure for cooking class. After a
warm welcome into the very home of our married-chef team, we are introduced
hands-on to the art of local, Touraine cooking. Angelique and Christophe,
our hosts and instructors, alert us immediately that good taste begins with
a sharp knife, and from that point our lesson ensues from the ground up,
literally, peeling and slicing potatoes. The dishes had been selected as
ones that could be prepared at home. True until we saw the unusual haunch of
meat in marinade, that of a wild boar, native to nearby forests. We heard
the daring tale of its death. It had been in battle with Cristophe’s car
bumper, one dark wet, wintry night. From
which telling our raconteur then settles into his contest with a Tarte Tatin,
a dessert for which he is nationally awarded. Thus, the fruits of our
collective labour ripen into a genial feast at a grand table in a household
of chefs.
Truly food symbolizes a great deal
in France. It is therefore not surprising that we discover an association
between the simple glass of white wine that we enjoy each dinner and the
striking, ornate architecture of the Loire’s Renaissance chateaux that we
have seen. Let me explain. The light-colored tuffeau sandstone of the
Touraine cliffs was quarried, carved and assembled in order to construct
these grand domiciles. A Touraine wine correspondingly reaches its perfectly
light and refreshingly convivial flavor in this very same soil. And so, as
we chatter and yak one dinner late in the week, we contemplate this
genuinely enticing reminder of things we had seen during our marvelous six
days’ visit to Loire Valley. It was a
suitable culmination to the ramblings we had made through vineyards and
architectural luxuries, through visions of beauty and prosperity and
upheaval and all that is the history of this region. It was charming to have
it all balance so effortlessly on the tip of the tongue sipping from a cool
goblet of local wine. It distilled the meaning of our experience. We felt
enriched and privileged in our small group, traveling off the beaten path
amongst the Renaissance chateaux of the Touraine region of France.