Images of Chinon: the town and the wine

These are just a few photos of street and winery art that I enjoyed seeing on visits there.

The economy of Chinon is based on tourism and wine. There's a big nuclear power plant on the Loire, not far from the town, which I imagine employs a lot of the locals. The town of Chinon has a population of about 8,000. The Chinon appellation is made up of some 2,300 hectares (more than 5,500 acres) planted in grapes. White wines and rosé wines make up only a small part of the total wine production; reds based on Cabernet Franc and a small proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon dominate.

Restored royal rooftops at Chinon

The first picture below is one that I took at Chinon in June 2005. Restoration work was carried out between then and now. The second picture is a crop of a more recent photo I found on this web site. The new rooftops on the part of the fortress called les logis royaux (the royal apartments) are visible.

Here's a link to another, closer photo of the restoration work and a link to a similar photo that I took in 2005 and posted yesterday as part of this series of posts about Chinon (Touraine).

South or North in Chinon?

My memories of Chinon are that it was a place that felt distinctly méridional. Southern, as in "the South of France." Maybe it's just that I was there in June — at least once. But I was also there in October and other not so summery months. Maybe I was just lucky to be there when the weather was fine. But there was something about the landscapes and the vegetation that looked like southern France as well.

As for that feeling of méridionalitude (I made that word up), the reality is quite the oposite. In his book about wines and the people who make them all around France (The New France, it's called), the British author Andrew Jefford points out that Chinon and nearby Bourgueil are the most northerly vineyards in France, along with those of Burgundy to the east, where fine red wines are produced successfully.

Chinon wines owe their excellence to the grape called Cabernet Franc, even though it is a challenge to bring Cabernet grapes to full ripeness so far north. The Chinon vintners accomplish it by doing successive harvest passes through their vines, to pick, at each moment, only the ripest grapes. It's time-consuming, but the result is deeper, more structured red wines. The same is true of Chinon's white wines, made from Chenin Blanc grapes (as in Vouvray). Using the same harvesting stragegy they can now produce riper, more flavor-saturated dry white wines.

CHM mentioned the other day that the logis royaux (the royal residences) at Chinon have been restored to their former glory since I took these pictures. They are the roofless buildings on the right in my photo on the right. Now they again have roofs on them. I need to go back to Chinon to see the interiors. Maybe this spring...

The old edition of the Cadogan Loire guidebook that I have calls the Tour de l'Horloge at Chinon (photo on the left) "anorexically thin." Another description of it that I've read calls it "pencil thin." Maybe we should call it tall and slender.

Chinon from afar

I was standing at a spot three or four miles from Chinon, near the wine village called Ligré on the opposite side of the Vienne river, when I took this picture of the town in June 2005.

Now that it's January 1, I can say Bonne Année. Alors, Bonne Année à vous tous ! Thank you for reading my blog and for all your good comments. I started blogging here in 2005. Sometimes I think about stopping, but I enjoy armchair tourism so much — looking at my own photos and others — that I can't really imagine signing off. By the way, the weather woman on Télématin says we are going to have a very rainy week to kick off 2024. Sigh. Oh well. I'll just enjoy my black-eyed peas today and hope the rains let up soon.