Vouvray
Take another glass of wine. You’ve earned it. You must line your inside with velvet if you are going to pump at it like that every day. Monsieur, the wine of Vouvray, if well kept, is downright velvet.
– L’Illustre Gaudissart, Honoré Balzac (published 1833)
It says something of Vouvray’s fame, and the regard with which Touraine’s most prestigious appellation is held by poets, authors and playwrights alike, that seeking a quote with which to open this guide I found myself with a surfeit of options.
Rather than Honoré Balzac I could, for example, have turned to Georges Simenon’s most famous fictional detective, Inspector Maigret, who admits to his doctor in Maigret â Vichy (published 1968) that he might have drunk a glass or two of Vouvray in his time. “If I start one of these cases with a Vouvray, for example…I have a tendency to continue with Vouvray.” Proof, surely, that Vouvray is the most cerebral of all Chenins.
Then again, what of Ian Fleming’s James Bond? Tailing the titular arch villain through the Loire Valley in Goldfinger (published 1959) was an oenological adventure for Bond, as not only did he enjoy a well-iced pint of Rosé d’Anjou in Orléans, barely two paragraphs later he finds himself hankering for an “ice-cold Vouvray” (it seems everything was “well iced” or “ice cold” with Bond – perhaps his palate was not quite as well-honed as his aim?).
There were many other quotes I could have chosen. Indeed, there are entire romantic novels and murder mysteries set around the vineyards and town of Vouvray itself, should the mood take you.
But really there is no other author more deserving of mention, none more dedicated to the town, the region and its wines, than Honoré Balzac (1799 – 1850). Many of the tales presented in La Comédie Humaine, Balzac’s multi-volume collection of novels and stories depicting French society during the first half of the 19th century, touch upon the region. Balzac was, after all, a native of Tours who returned regularly to the region, not least because he was smitten with Château de Moncontour, a property he dreamt he might one day purchase.
The most notable of his comedic tales, at least when it comes to Vouvray, is L’Illustre Gaudissart, the story of the merchant Felix Gaudissart (pictured in a cover illustration by Pierre Vidal). A multi-talented vendor of clothing, hats, life insurance and newspaper subscriptions (proof, if it were needed, that diversification is not a new phenomenon), the Parisian Gaudissart embarks on a sales trip to Touraine, and ultimately to Vouvray. There, in a precursor of every modern-day wine scam, Gaudissart ends up buying two barrels of the local wine from the unscrupulous Margaritis, the only problem being that the barrels do not exist. A pistol duel at dawn, and a battle for compensation from Madame Margaritis, ensues.
