Valençay for wines and the château

Peter and Jill arrived yesterday at noontime. We made lunch — green beans from the garden seasoned with duck fat and served with chicken livers, duck gizzards, and my pork rillons, along with a platter of cheeses. Fresh fruit for dessert.

Jill and Peter in front of the Valençay wine coop

Then Peter, Jill, and I set out for Valençay to see the château there and, for me, to buy some Valençay wine. Peter and I drove over to Valençay on his last visit a year and a half ago, but we had found the château closed for the season back then.

Flower beds and statuary at the château in Valençay

This time the weather was beautiful, and there was no way the château would be closed on a September Saturday afternoon. We were not disappointed. Our first stop was to see the kitchens, and then we walked through part of the gardens and took a quick tour of the interior of the château itself, including the dining room with its enormous round table that seats 24.

Valençay was owned by Napoleon's powerful foreign minister, Talleyrand. Talleyrand hired one of the greatest of France's chefs, Carême, to do the cooking at the château for state dinners and other fancy affairs, so Valençay has an important place in French culinary history.

Before arriving at the château, we stopped at a wine cooperative that I had driven by a couple of months ago. I wanted to buy some white wine, and why not some Valençay? This way I could check out the wine and the prices without making a special trip over there (it's 10 or 12 miles from home).

The sign at the coop still says V.D.Q.S. It needs updating.

Valençay is a wine district that received its AOC designation in 2003. Before that date, it was classified as a V.D.Q.S. wine — that means Vin Délimité de Qualité Supérieure, and it means the wine was recognized as a good local product. Valençay grape-growers and winemakers were held to certain standards. AOC — Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée — is a step up from V.D.Q.S., which means the growing and winemaking standards are stricter and the wine is more prestigious.

Anyway, I got 10 liters of Sauvignon Blanc for 16.70 euros. Jill and I tasted it at the coop, and we thought it was light, fruity, and refreshing.

Posing for a photo at Valençay...

We had a little bit more last night with dinner. Walt made pumpkin-stuffed raviolis with a sage-butter sauce for an appetizer, and I made a roast loin of pork with apples for the main course. Walt made little pear tarts for dessert. The pumpkins, apples, and sage came out of our garden. It was a success.

...and ready for her closeup

It's a challenge to cook for Peter Hertzmann because he is such an accomplished cook himself. You can see his web sites here and here. We're going to the market this morning and Peter will be doing the cooking later today.

Picking up the thread

Over the past three years — I've been blogging for nearly three years now — I've written a series of topics to relate some of the reasons for our move to France in 2003 and to document the process of finding a house in France, selling one in California, and getting all the paperwork for the move done. Here's a list of at least some of those topics:

1. Quitting California
2. Going to Amboise
3. Monday in Montrichard
4. Seeing Saint-Aignan for the first time
5. The house at La Renaudière
6. It all starts to blur
7. Where do we sign?
8. Back to California
9. Deciding to sell
10. Scaling back and facing realities
11. May Day, now and then
12. From there to here
13. The way it was supposed to be

This morning I started to think seriously of writing some more about our move to France in 2003. When I wrote the posts listed above (they are links to previous topics) I seem to have left off at the point when we put our house on the market in San Francisco and started researching the process for getting long-stay visas for ourselves from the French authorities and permission to import the dog into France.

Then, this morning, I started readying topics about Collette and her death in 2006 and got completely wrapped up in those memories. Now I don't feel like writing. I don't have time. If you want to read a little about Collette, click the "Collette dog" entry on the index in the sidebar on the right.

We have company coming tomorrow for the weekend, and I have to go out to do some shopping — I need to go to three different supermarkets. And then I need to come back and straighten up the house a little bit.

So I'm postponing. Not procrastinating, just postponing.

Lunch in the sun

When Louise and her husband were here for lunch on Tuesday, she mentioned something to me that she had said before in a blog comment. My story about leaving California in April 2003, as posted in topics on this blog, suddenly ends as Walt, the dog Collette, and I were driving across New Mexico.

I think I'll spend a few posts picking up that thread and writing about the rest of that big trip across North America and the Atlantic Ocean. Be warned...

Lunch on Tuesday was very nice. It was warm enough, for a change, that we could sit outside in the sun for two or three hours. We opened one of my crocks of rillons and had those as an appetizer, along with corn chips and an onion-garlic-herb dip I made using fromage frais (a little like a smooth cottage cheese). My posts about making rillons, a Touraine specialty, are here and here.

Then we had some of the zucchini quiche that Walt made over the weekend and posted about here. To go with it, I made a green bean salad with the nice haricots verts we have been getting from the garden for weeks now. The beans were seasoned with thinly sliced shallots, fresh chopped parsley, and a home-made vinaigrette (Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and a blend of olive and canola oils).

We then had a cheese course with two goat cheeses from Selles-sur-Cher, one very fresh and soft, the other more aged and a little drier and harder. We also had a Neufchâtel cow's milk cheese, which is from Normandy and is something like a camembert but made in a heart shape. I can't really describe it but it's salty and a little crumbly inside, and it's one of my favorite cheeses.

For dessert, Walt made the little apple tarts that he posted about here.

We opened a bottle of 2007 Touraine Sauvignon white wine from the Domaine de la Renaudie and a bottle of 2006 Côt red wine from Jean-Noël Guerrier. Both winemakers are neighbors of ours, and both grow grapes out in the Renaudière vineyard where we walk the dog every day.

Part of my motivation in writing this topic is to help Louise and her husband remember the lunch we had together. Walt and I both greatly enjoyed meeting them and spending some time.

September 16, 2003

How can it be five years ago? What do they say? ...when you're having fun.

Somewhere in France

The somewhere is near Bouges, south of Valençay, in the Indre. I guess you'd need a horse to travel down this path.

The same place, or very close by

For the road above, you wouldn't need a horse, but a "two-horse" car. See below.

This a "two-horse(power)" car, a Deux Chevaux or 2CV.

Happy traveling.