Sancerre: Chasing wine, cheese and taxis
To a delightful weekend in the country.
“Pas. De. Tout.” said the woman on the phone, with more than a hint of glee. When a French person fully punctuates each of those words you know you’re in trouble. Every syllable is a hammer, nailing your request into its coffin. I called another number and asked the same question. This time the woman actually started laughing. I wasn’t trying to get a table at The Ritz on a Saturday night, I just wanted a cab to take us from Tracy-Sancerre train station to actual Sancerre. It’s an hour walk and we had two cats in a pet carrier and a pair of suitcases. The rain was getting heavier by the minute and I’d already called eight taxi numbers.
After a 75 minute wait, we finally found a driver who explained that most taxis in the area have steady work ferrying people to and from hospitals and rarely take tourists. He agreed to drop us at our location, which was not in Sancerre but the nearby hamlet of Ménétréol. Not to worry, I thought, our rental property seemed to have bikes and Google says it’s only a ten minute cycle to the town. The driver did warn me that finding a taxi back to the station after the weekend would be difficult, but at that point my most pressing concern was that it was already past lunchtime and I had consumed neither wine nor cheese.
The house we were renting was covered in cobwebs, but that was fine. We needed to get out of there and up to the village where all the vino is kept. Though first I had to take a work call and as soon as that was finished there was another torrential downpour. I started wondering if I could make my own wine by fermenting the spiders in the kitchen. Finally the sky cleared, so I pumped up the tires on a couple of rusty boneshakers I found in the garage and we hit the trail. That 10 minute cycle turned out to be an hour of pushing bikes up a near vertical hill. I convinced myself that at least getting back would be easier, unless of course it started raining again.
The town square is beautifully quaint and has four bars which were of course closed by the hour we turned up. A place called Le Caveau Sancerrois seemed to be open, so we made a pit stop for a bottle of white. The friendly owner reaffirmed my fears that the supposed 20 minute cycle to the nearest supermarket would probably be more of a two hour slog. He suggested we head to the hotel at the bottom of the street for something to eat. “It’s open until 2am...” he winked.
Hôtel du Rempart is exactly what you would want from a rural boarding house. Like a feelgood version of The Shining, there were decades of staff group pictures on the walls, a restaurant packed with families tucking into hearty plates, and a menu where every dish seemed to be meat. We opted for an entrecote and a jarret de porc, along with a bottle of Joseph Mellot Pinot Noir recommended by the owner. The Mellot family, I was told, was a big deal around these parts. I made a mental note to go to their shop for a tasting, a decision I would later regret.
After eating, the landlady suggested we head to the Hotel bar next door, where the vibe would be a little different. She wasn’t wrong about that. The place looked like a strip club designed by David Lynch. Aside from the pole dancing booth next to the darts board, there was an inexplicable Loony Toons conveyor belt device that was carrying upside down wine glasses across the ceiling. We stayed for a while, hoping that someone might attempt a striptease but the rain outside was getting heavier and our ride home looked more precarious by the minute.
Rolling down that steep hill in a pitch black storm wasn’t that much easier than trying to drag ourselves up it. As we bobbled across the gravel, my headlamp caught sight of something dashing across the path in front of us. I felt certain it was a skinwalker, half man, half beast, scampering around the hills, drunk on the rotting grapes it foraged from the ground. Either that or it was a deer, but after an evening at Hotel Rempart nothing can be certain.
The next morning we decided the only sensible thing to do was move into actual Sancerre and we were fortunate to find a nice house with a little garden. The cats set off to explore their new setting and we marched into town, ready for a taste of the good life. We found it at La Taverne du Connétable, a smart little bistro on the square with a relaxed yet upmarket feel and a staff where only half the servers seemed to hate the clientele.
We started off with some accras de morue and a regional beer called La Rur’ale to wash them down with. The frothy brew went perfectly with the oily fried fish balls, soaking up the crunchy crust of the batter. Next we ordered the Ravioles avec lardons with the famous Crottin de Chavignol sauce. A steaming bowl of molten cheese with a gratin topping, it arrived hissing and every bite filled the nostrils with goat’s milk fumes. A glass of Sancerre glided over the flavours without blending with them, like a beautiful oil slick on a gloriously cheesy lake. It was so filling that we were incredibly relieved that the waiting staff forgot to bring the duck breast we ordered and so we could strike it from the bill.
We didn’t have to wait long for duck though, as that night we dined at Le Clos Du Marechal, an expérience bistronomique in the former home of Marshal Macdonald, Napoleon's right-hand man. Like the general himself, the portions were a little on the small side, but the pork belly paired with sauerkraut and chutney was worth taking time over. The charred root vegetables almost outdid the perfectly cooked duck breast, leaving us with a warm, autumnal glow. The young waiter and waitress didn’t seem to know much about wine, probably because they were barely old enough to drink, but their innocent nature was shattered when, on our way out, we spied them through a window, engaged in some very flirty play fighting in a back room.
The next day I was determined to do some proper wine tasting and so I headed into town, armed with my scrapbook into which I’ve pasted maps of vineyards and accompanied by my rudimentary scribblings. I’d already made an attempt the day before to visit the renowned Joseph Mellot boutique but when I got there and asked the man if I could try something he stared at me like I’d walked in and asked him what wine was. Determined not to look like a plebeian, I actually got my little book out and tried to show him. Seeing the sheer derision in face was most humiliating and I scuttled out of the store in shame.
Well I don’t care how long your family has been making wine, some snobby little fop in a store won’t stop me having a good time. We visited the Château de Sancerre, and paid 8 euros to have a lovely woman feed us six different wines and field all my questions.
Sancerre, she explained, has three terroirs: silex, which is flint stone, terre blanches, a mix of clay and limestone, and caillotes which is pure limestone. Château de Sancerre also experiments with different methods of vinification, from the standard practice in vats, to oak barrels which add flavour and clay amphorae which allow air to pervade the fermenting wine, enhancing its purity. I found the vanilla notes in the oak barrel wines too strong so I bought a clay fermented Clos du Roy from the caillotes terroir, and obviously a couple of traditional bottles for good measure.
I then popped over the road to Aux Trésors de Bacchus for a similar treatment but this time focused on the reds. My favourite was their Sancerre L'Ancienne Vigne, from the vines of the village of Sury-en-Vaux. A terroir that is particularly favorable to Pinot Noir, the Bacchus man told me the vines were around 80 years old, and that 2020 had been a particularly sunny year, resulting in a deep, almost port-like wine that, at 15% vol, was rather strong. That sounded like good value to me, so I grabbed a bottle and some more Crottin de Chavignol for the road.
With the wine stores stocked, I turned back to the now pressing problem of how I was going to get them home. The tourist information centre had no taxi numbers, suggesting only that there was a 6am bus which would take us to within a few miles of the station. I’d rather jump in the Loire and hope it floated me home than that. On the plus side, they did have a racy two seater e-bike which I rented out for the afternoon. The tourist info man warned the bike was particularly powerful and I should keep it in a low gear when going from a stationary start. Yeah, sure mate, I’ll remember.
Bombing around the hills with a belly full of wine was perhaps not the smartest thing to do but it was definitely a real thrill. Since this week was the vendanges when the grapes would be harvested it wouldn't be impossible for a guided vineyard tour, so instead we made our own, finding a quiet hillside and going for a little stroll to see for ourselves. After fondling some juicy bunches of Sauvignon Blanc, it was time to head back and start considering that 6am bus.
I had completely forgotten the instructions about starting the bike up at full power and the thing comically threw us off in Charlie Chaplin slapstick fashion. While trying to get up from underneath the bike, I became aware of a presence looming down on us. Was it the skin walker beast from the other night, desperate to satisfy its hunger for wine-soaked human flesh? Perhaps the snobby man from the Joseph Mellot boutique, come to sneer at me further? No! It was in fact a taxi! With a driver who wanted to know why we were lying in the middle of the road.
I jumped up, and, a little too eagerly, asked if he would take us to the train station in the morning. He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged.
“Yeah, why not…”