Chinon
Ne fais doute aucune que Chinon ne soit ville antique, son blason l’atteste, auquel est dit deux, ou trois fois, Chinon, petite ville grand renom, assise sur pierre ancienne, au haut le bois, au pied Vienne.
Le Cinquiesme Livre de Pantagruel, François Rabelais, 1564
It would be inconceivable to open this guide to the wines of Chinon without turning first to this town’s most famous son, François Rabelais (c.1494 – c.1553). His words on this town and its wines, including those I have cited above (the latter part of which is often presented out of context as a rhyming ditty), still echo around Chinon’s limestone walls today, close to five centuries after his passing. This is despite the fact that the authorship of Le Cinquiesme Livre, from which the words above are taken, and which was published posthumously more than a decade after his death, is widely questioned.
The quoted text – in which the giant Pantagruel explains that Chinon is an ancient city (possibly even the world’s oldest), as evinced by its coat of arms which declares it to be a town of “great renown, seated on ancient stone, with woods above and the Vienne below” does not even mention wine. Yet the Rabelais mythology flows through the vines and wines of Chinon as surely as the Vienne flows through the town.
It seems widely accepted that François’ father Antoine Rabelais once owned vines here, but not that long ago, during a visit in the region, a vigneron attested – with certainty – that it was the very vineyard in which we walked that Rabelais senior had once tended. I found myself wondering how many other vignerons would like to make the same claim. I have also heard rumour that one local vigneron, to the ire of their peers, recently attempted to trademark the Rabelais name and image for their labels. The desire among Chinon’s vignerons to own a piece of the Rabelais legend, to claim a vinous lineage to Rabelais himself, maybe even to have control over the story, is strong.
I confess on my first visit to Chinon, three decades ago, I knew nothing of Rabelais. My school days had focused on Shakespeare, Dickens and Waugh (sadly not the influential 20th-century British wine merchant Harry Waugh, but the 20th-century author Evelyn), while the star of my French textbook had been Monsieur Bertillon, a customs officer at Orly airport, not a character typical of French medieval literature. Rabelais and I were finally introduced when I paused to sit beneath the imposing bronze statue of the man himself, that which sits near the centre of the town on the right bank of the Vienne. And it was a brief encounter; having rested for a moment I headed through the town and up the hill, to the Couly-Dutheil tasting room.
Today Couly-Dutheil has a rather smart tasting room which faces the rear of Chinon’s royal fortress and its clock tower (pictured), but back in the early 1990s tastings were offered in the low-slung building which sits at the foot of the Clos de l’Echo. Inside there were a gaggle of visitors, and two ladies dutifully pouring samples. I had no idea about cuvées or vintages, but I tasted them all, and it was clear even to my novice palate that the 1989 Chinon Clos de l’Echo was superior. But being a penniless student with a bank balance deep in the red I could not afford to buy any.
So I purchased three bottles anyway. Well, what’s a few more quid on an already expansive overdraft?
