Our family is traveling to the Loire for around a week in late July this summer. Two kids 11 and 9, along with another family who are not wine people. We are staying in a house a few km west of Saumur.
I have read all the threads on WB on Loire travel. Does anyone have any restaurant, wine bar recs in the Saumur area. Looking for 1-2 max nice restaurants, maybe more along solid bistro that our kids will tolerate. Maybe a lunch place in Chinon where we will probably spend one day tasting? Any markets we should not miss.
I wil probably be abel to get a max of 4-5 winery visits without causing family rebellion.
I’m thinking
Chinon:
Baudry and Plouzeau
Bourgueil
Gauthier and Chevalerie
Saumur
Filliatreau
I’ll probably go in the weeds on my serious tastings, but if anyone has any recs about a more civilian type tasting our friends might like in town with reasonable wine, or any good places to have a few fun glasses of wine or a good wine store in the area, it would be much appreciated.
Any kid friendly activity recs as well.
We will likely be spending days doing outdoor activities with the kids on most days maybe a good lunch and cooking at the house. We can cook and any good markets would be appreciated.
I can’t remember the names and it’s been 10 years ago, but went to a couple of bars in Chinon and in one of them we got ourselves an outside table in a beautiful part of the town to sample local wines. I remember wait-staff coming out with bottles after bottles, carrying them in metal buckets pouring into our glasses whatever we pointed out to. Cheap, too!
In Saumur, specifically at the Filliatreau winery, my wife arranged for our group to taste and include a delicious 4-course lunch in their beautiful tuffe-cave, next to their tasting venue, overlooking the vineyards. An fyi in case it’s of interest.
If anyone in the family is interested in horses, the French national equitation school (which had its origins as a military equestrian school) is in Saumur. Like the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, it is one of the historically important schools of equitation. https://www.ifce.fr/cadre-noir/
Assa. One of my favorite dining experiences ever. Michelin Red and Green starred. Husband and wife team. If you’re really into food, I recommend asking to sit upstairs so you can watch Anthony and he’ll actually serve you a course.
One of the other highlights for me was their interest in wine education. Of course restaurants of this caliber in France know their juice, but with many of our pairings we were given a main glass and a small pour of an opposite-aged vintage of the same exact wine (what I mean, is one aged minimum 10 years and one very young) so we could compare and contrast. I don’t know if it was because the sommelier was feeling cheery that night or it’s a baked in part of their service, but it was very appreciated.
Edit: Wellllll, it’s been some years and I forgot that it’s not close to Saumur (I was based in Tours)… So a 2 hour drive to dinner might not be in the cards
Reviving this thread if anyone on here has updated recommendations. I will be staying near here for a week. Also, any tips on things to see, eat, or drink en route from Chartres to this area?
I don’t have much in the restaurant recommendation as we ended up staying at a house that had a garden and a farm and we basically got meat from the butcher in Saumur, cheese from an honestly fantastic fromager right across the street from it in downtown Saumur. II cannot remember the name, but there’s only one or two butchers and one cheese store in the town. Both were excellent. There was a very solid chocolate store a little bit up the hill away from the river as well. Maybe barre du chocolate but not sure. The downtown part of town is all walkable and handful of minutes and if you just Google search of chocolate store, I bet you will easily find it.We cooked food most nights. One thing I would highly recommend is there is a mushroom museum just outside of town. It’s underground caves in limestone. Super interesting especially if you have kids. Even without kids it’s very interesting. I will also try to find out how to attach a picture but this pile of mushrooms that I bought was under €10.
We found a very solid wine store called La Tonelle in Saumur That had some very good local selections, smart selections from other parts of France. I ended up taking home some bottles of Selosse at very good prices.
Also, we enjoyed the tour at Combier In town as well. They are the originators of triple sec. I thought it was really fun and took about an hour. Again, if you have kids, they loved it. There were lots of non-alcoholic flavored things that they could try.
If you are a military history buff, there is a pretty interesting tank museum in town.
Overall, we did not really do fine dining outside the house. The place we stayed was honestly fantastic and we are all very reasonably skilled people in the kitchen and we made fantastic food most nights with great local ingredients and good wine at the house.
I know the mushroom museum might sound really weird, but it’s one of the most fun food type tours that I’ve done in a while and it takes maybe 30 or 40 minutes. The fact that it’s a working farm with obscenely inexpensive mushrooms for sale is a bonus.
Thank you; and that pile of mushrooms looks fantastic. I forgot to mention that I am staying in Bourgueil area AOC (or whatever that is called these days AOP?). I’m deciding between a day visit to Saumur area or Jasnieres area (one of my favorite wines, but I’ve been told that the surrounding area is a little bleak). For some reason, it has been very difficult to arrange visits to producers in Saumur, but a little easier elsewhere.
