01 October 2024

Montlouis-sur-Loire and its wines

Across the Loire river from Vouvray, there's another wine village called Montlouis-sur-Loire where equally good white wines are made. It's actually more than a village; it's a town (pop. 11,000). As recently as the early 1960s, population of Montlouis was only 3,500. Those are the glassy waters of the Loire in the photo on the left above, and the bridge in the distance carries TGV trains between Paris and Tours. (That's a Citroën 2CV automobile I saw in Montlouis in the picture on the right.)


The Montlouis wine appellation is much smaller (950 acres) than the Vouvray appellation (nearly 5,000 acres) according to Wikipédia. The wines of both appellations, still and sparkling, are made pretty much exclusively with the juice of Chenin Blanc grapes.