La Gourmandière, une cave à vins

...près du Château de Chenonceau. That puts it less than 15 miles west of Saint-Aignan. I'm going there this morning, unless I find the roads too icy for me to do the drive safely. I guess I'll wait a little while for the sun to come up and warm up the pavement. La Gourmandière is one of several big wine companies and wine shops (cave à vins) in the eastern part of what used to be the Touraine province in the Loire Valley. It's worth the drive for the variety and quality of the wines it makes and then sells at very reasonable prices La Gourmandière used to be a wine co-op with a membership of several hundred grape-growers, but it was sold to a new owner a few years ago.

La Gourmandière produces and sells "still" (not sparkling) red, rosé, and white wines as well as white and rosé sparkling wines in bottles. It also sells non-sparkling red, white, and rosé wines in bag-in-box containers as well as in bulK (en vrac). In other words, you can bring your own containers to the winery and the staff fill them for you with wine that is stored in huge stainless-steel vats. The wines I'm interested in today are red Côt (a.k.a. Malbec) and Cabernet Franc wines sold in ten-liter bag-in-box containers for two euros per liter. That would be the equivalent of thirteen 75cl bottles for about $22 U.S. Here's a link to the company's web site.

P.S. I just published this post after not being able to do so yesterday. I don't know why. It posted partially, but the result was a post that didn't allow comments and didn't display the blog's sidebar. I hope this one is working today.