Drink
We have come to the Loire to drink, and drink we do: wine at lunch, wine in the vineyards in the afternoons and wine in the evening, before, during and after our dinner. We are so drowsy with drinking that when we are not raising a glass to our lips, all we can do is sleep. Except I can't, because we have checked into Chateau Weird for the night.
The chatelaine, a birdlike former singer, is clearly mad, and there is even a hunchbacked maidservant. We have been offered dinner, yet there is no clue as to when it might be served. Worse, the chatelaine does not seem to know that you should put ice in gin and tonic.
But I am too distracted to mind, for the chatelaine has a face as pale as death, and it is difficult not to imagine her relentlessly prowling the dim corridors after nightfall or materialising out of thin air to suffocate the life out of us as we bask in the warm sun. So regular patrols of the topiary-studded grounds are keeping me very busy. I am not too worried about the lack of a key to our room - since when was a puny lock ever an obstacle to a psychopath? But my wine-soaked brain skips into unpleasantly hallucinogenic dreams each time I try to rest.
Ah, yes, we have drunk much wine. Here, chenin blanc is the local grape for whites, while cabernet franc and gamay produce the tasty reds. At a festival in Azay-le-Rideau there were stalls on every corner, and we bought seven or eight different beakersful for a mere five francs a throw before collapsing into oblivion. All were delicious to drink on the street as we lolled among the bakers costumed in old- fashioned whites; none were so wonderful we wanted to take them home. But this is the point of plenty. The wines here have less to prove, though there is much pride at stake. Restaurants list their tipples by producer, rather than country or region - the lists are so locally based that the latter become irrelevant. Asked for a recommendation, waitresses will breezily suggest you try some of, say, Monsieur Deschamps' brew, wafting a hand over their shoulder to indicate that his vineyards are, perhaps, just across the road.
Chinon is the best-known appellation in the Loire, and on its gravelly land the cabernet franc is king. Its wines are very good - juicy and aromatic - and there are more producers than you can shake a baguette at. It's so difficult to choose that you may as well just try them all, though some are superior, notably Charles Joguet. In the town of Chinon itself, endless caves vie for attention in the shadow of the castle's dominating ruins.
Back at Chateau Weird, I am astonished to find, even though we're in the heart of the Loire, that the wine list is somewhat bald. We are offered simply Chinon or Touraine or Azay-le-Rideau, which tells us very little. I speculate feverishly that this lack of choice may be connected to the vicious-looking axe that graces a wall of the dining-room. Could it perhaps be that our mysterious chatelaine, who seems completely dislocated from her time and place, fails to trumpet the wares of nearby vignerons because she is embroiled in some ancient and deadly feud with them?
More alarmingly, I fear she may be trying to poison us. We sit down to dinner in the elegant salon with its black and white chequered floor, leather sofas, crisp linen tablecloths and garden flowers. Our bottle of Chinon arrives, freezing cold from a vast refrigerator. Cool, it would be nice; icy, it is not. Madame the pale chatelaine sweeps in again and proudly sets two plates of quivering seafood in aspic before us. We stare at them, frantically wondering what horrors this relic of stately banqueting tables may conceal. My feverish mind sees human ears, instead of scallops, embedded in the jaundiced jelly.
We cup the wine in our now clammy palms, drinking rapidly to steady our fraying nerves. Outside lizards dart between the lengthening shadows, and the bell in a distant church spire tolls.
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