France: Loire Valley – Wine Tasting

Loire Valley is world famous for its wine, the grapes grown mostly are Chenin and Cabernet Franc. The poor sandy soils are perfect for these grape varieties and the hundreds of kilometers of underground caves are ideal for storing at constant +13 Celsius (caves are the result of the limestone being used up for all these chateaus and cathedrals built around). The region is also known for its premium vintage sparkling wines, all aged in bottles in the caves for 2-10 years. Interestingly, the pressure is the bottle during the second sparkling wine fermentation is almost 2x the final pressure, so these bombs explode violently from time to time. You can walk along the long dark cave corridors of dusty bottles, some rotated by machines, some manually. Then you can emerge from the darkness and enjoy the tasting. All in all, I did 4 wineries and tasted 20 wines.