Marvellous Tasting at Chateau de Minière

Day 14 (part 1)

Marvellous Tasting at Chateau de Minière

This, our first outdoor tasting of the trip, was marvellous. In gorgeous sunny weather, and overlapping with the local pony club, we enjoyed meeting the crew at Chateau de Minière at Ingrandes de Touraine. Here, we tasted their excellent Bourgueil wines.

Owner Kathleen was unable to be present but Anna, Stephen and Anissa helped us through the tasting, a lovely leisurely one that included sparkling, rosé and red, all from the Cabernet Franc grape. 

There is a long line of feminine tradition here, now being maintained by Kathleen. The estate was handed down through a line of women for two centuries ever since Marie-Genevieve d'Espinay married Martial du Soulier in 1767 and brought him the property in her dowry. In 1995, Bertrand and Evelyne de Mascarel acquired Minière from the last descendants of Marie-Genevieve, Margarède and Diane du Soulier.

In 2010 Sigurd and Kathleen Mareels - Van den Berghe acquired Minière and will continue the further development of the vineyard and chateau.  One of those many developments is making the vineyard organic and that is almost complete.

Left to right: CL and yours truly (centre) pictured with Chateau staff Anna and Stephen.
Thanks to Anissa for taking the pic.

Back to the current wines. All were impressive but our favourite and perhaps the favourite of everyone on the estate is the Vignes Centenaires 2009 made, as you might expect, from vines of an average 100 years of age, some as old as 110! Also ordered were some Chateau de Minière 2009 and 2010.

We just could leave the sparkling rosé behind and so a few bottles of that are also on the way to Ireland along with some “specialites artisanales” of the house including Morello Cherries au vin de Minière.

Chateau de Minière is a lovely place to visit, right in the heart of the Bourgueil vineyards and close to the magnificent Loire river, and you may read more about it here.

We had planned to go boating on the Vienne and the Loire in the afternoon but that fell through when not enough passengers turned up at Chinon. The boatman declined to start up even though the four of us present offered to make up the difference to the required six, according to their leaflet, saying the minimum was eight! Had to make do with a spell in the pool as the temperature reached 28 degrees. Not a bad consolation!