5 days planned, staying at les Hauts de Loire. Never been to Loire. Ideas welcome. Not necessarily wine centric. Will have car. Then 2 days at Troisgros. . .
Need to know more.
Chateau? Gardens? Da Vinci?
Honestly, while I enjoyed my one visit to Loire, it’s not particularly inspiring. A lot of farm country, some beautiful Chateau, and of course wine and food. Chateau: Once you’ve seen a few, they all start to look alike. The best one was certainly Chenonceau, in some ways because it wasn’t the most physically impressive, but definitely the most charming. A couple of others we went to were Vilandry, and Chambord (which I would advise against - it is impressive in its size and grandeur, but completely empty and quite sterile).
highlights I need to hit re museums, chateaux, restaurants, wineries, etc over 5 days.
I’m currently reading The Sommelier’s Atlas of Taste. While I’ve never been, they recommend Vincent Cuisinier de Campagne. Looks like it may be a ways from you, but perhaps you’ll find yourself out that way. Have a nice trip!
Definitely go to Chenonceau. We like Chateau d’Azay as well. Chambord is impressive but sterile. We really enjoyed staying in Chinon (neat little downtown area and one of the days we were there was a market day), but that’s a pretty long haul from where you’re staying. Amboise seemed pretty cool too.
We redid the Loire a few years ago. We stayed Domaine des Hauts de Loire on our first trip many years ago. Some of things are a ways from your hotel. A few of our highlights:
Chateau -
Le Clos Luce for everything Leonardo https://www.vinci-closluce.com/en/
Villandry for the gardens https://www.villandry.com/
Langeais for the tapestries Château et parc de Langeais - Site officiel
Wine -
Huet - great personal tasting
Chateau de Epire - tasting, a walk in the vineyards above the Loire, and one of the best caramel tarts for lunch at the bakery in town nearby
Baumard - with an added bonus the church in town is worth a look
Other -
-Tank Museum in Saumur Saumur Armored Museum: the history of the tank a must if you like military history
-Fontevraud to see the Royal grave of Eleanor of Aquitaine Discovering Fontevraud Royal Abbey : so many ways to visit !
- a son et lumiere show - we saw the one at Blois
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Here’s our itinerary from our 2019 Loire adventure. We stayed in a wonderful B&B in Saumur which is a bit of a hike from where you’ll be staying. We did day trips out each day to a different area:
8/31/2019
Stay at Manoir Plessis Bellevue, Saumur France
9/1/2019 (Saumur)
Domaine Filliatreau
Caves Louis de Grenelle
9/2/2019 (Savennières)
Chateau d’Epire
Domaine du Closel
Domaine aux Moines
9/3/2019 (Chinon)
Domaine Bernard Baudry
Olga Raffault
9/4/2019 (Vouvray)
Domaine Huet
Chateau Chenonceau
9/5/2019 (Saumur/Vaudelnay)
Veuve Amiot
Bouvet-Labuday
Chateau de Fosse-Seche
9/6/2019 (Chinon)
Couly-Duthiel
Saturday, September 7, 2019
TGV to Paris
Baudry and Huet were exceptional and both included tours of the caves and/or winery.
Also 2nd d’Epire, walking the vineyard with Paul Bizard was a lot of fun and very educational and if you can, take lunch in town at A Table Chez Mili.
In Saumur we had an extraordinary dinner at Le Pot de Lapin.
Highly recommend this restaurant en route between Loire and Troisgros…
I was in Amboise in 2019. You appear to be close. Our favorite restaurant was La Fourchette in Amboise. A small husband & wife run, delightfully quaint bistro. Amboise has a fantastic Sunday market. The castle is worth a visit. We rented bikes one day and rode out to Chenonceaux which took all day. Beautiful countryside ride. We only made it to three wineries. Huet and Pinon in Vouvray were both terrific. Both require appointments. Huet is grand with extensive caves. Pinon is a small operation run by Julien Pinon. I love Pinon’s wines. I also recommend a visit across the river to Chidaine in Montlouis. No appointment needed, but a terrific tasting of their entire lineup.
About 10 km due west of Tours is the sleepy village of Luynes. There’s one hotel that’s pleasant and kind of funky - Hôtel Le XII. It has a restaurant (maybe the only one in town?). I’ve eaten there 2 or 3 times. The chef is a serious and talented guy, who I think could be celebrated with a platform of any greater magnitude.
The meals have been exceptionally good and sophisticated despite their modest tariff.
Chef Yoann and I have become casually friendly as a result of a couple of after-service wine sharing episodes and some social media correspondence. So, if you decide to go, tell him I sent you.
Went to a couple of Chateau in the Loire on a day trip there in 2018 (no wineries, but we also went to Burgundy and Champagne on that trip). Saw Château de Chenonceau and Amboise. Pretty magnificent, but then again, there are probably a bunch of other chateau that also are wonderful.
Reviving this thread… We are currently thinking of an early August visit to the Loire. Haven’t really had a chance to plan a summer vacation and understood it’s relatively short notice. We’re considering flying to Paris and renting a car from there for about a week.
alan weinberg, do you have any recommendations based on your recent trip (other than Troisgrois, I saw your thread about that)?
Any other thoughts on restaurants or places to stay?
My wife likes gardens a lot, any particular Chateaux worth visiting just for that?
How did people make reservations at Huet and Baudry? Any other wineries that are taking visitors?
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stay away from Les Hautes de Loire. Highly rated 2 Michelin star restaurant actually has only one now and first 3 wines I ordered they didn’t have. Hotel sucked though looks great on website. It’s a Relais&Chateau. I scorched them w a review since they sucked so many ways and were uncaring. Meals were kind of uninspiring in Loire. We spent 5 days. Should have been 2 or 3. Didn’t do wineries.
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Les Hautes Roches in Rochecorbon between Tours and Vouvray (3km from Huet) has cool ‘troglodytic’ cave rooms and a good restaurant. 10 mins drive to Tours, about the same to Montlouis. We liked it there.
Andy,
from my experience: there are two kinds of tastings at Huet – you can sign up on their website for a basic tasting room experience, no different from something you might get at a drive-by place in Napa. You do get the chance to buy at an OK discount. otherwise, skip this type of tasting chez Huet, if you find a connection for a proper tour, that’ll be worth it.
You can sign up for a tasting on Baudry’s website, just send them a note about possible dates, give them plenty of time. Matthieu leads the discussions (more than just a tasting) in person. His tasting room is quite near his caves. English is very good. You’ll get a chance to ‘deviner’. Ask Matthieu about his relatively new, enormous, cement fermentation tanks. He let me just wander around the 1st year cave. Fantastic experience to learn about wine, and have a good time. Buy some wine from him, and bring ‘un petit cadeau de remerciement’. Seriously, you’ll want to show your appreciation when leaving.
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Driving from Paris to Amboise in a few weeks, curious if anyone has a suggestion for a good stop along the A10 along the way for lunch and a bit of leg stretching. Orleans seems like an obvious choice but a smaller town might be easier for a quick stop. Le Doyenné is closed that day.
We found the drive to be a quick 2 hours and, of course, all is relative in terms of your preferred pace. In any case, we had lunch at our destination so that drinking wine will not present as an issue for the drivers (including myself 
).
Restaurant des Plantes in Orleans.
Thanks, guess we’ll see how quickly we make it out. Of course the issue in France seems of course being that there is a very limited time window to get lunch!
Though your comment does bring up another question - is there any issue in France with taking home (in the car) an opened bottle of wine?