Little wine excursion

[joeyz6]

Had the chance to hop down to Chinon today. It's a beautiful little medieval town, very well maintained. Unfortunately, all of the wine stores, the wine museum, and the wineries were closed ... except, fortunately, Couly-Dutheil, which I had read about and whose label I'd seen in some stores. Beautiful tasting facility; it's not exactly what you imagine when you think of wine touring in little appelations in central France. Kinda reminded me of some of the nicer California tasting rooms.
In any case, this is a respected producer that I suppose you all are familiar with. I picked up a '98 Clos de l'Echo (which I was instructed not to open for at least another five years), and a '95 Clos de l'Olive that was awesome. The total price was 25 euros, which seemed like a pretty good deal.
The Clos de l'Echo vineyard is right next to the medieval castle ruins, so I got a peak of the nice, rolling, vine-covered hills from one of the castle's towers when I took a tour.
Hope I get the chance to visit again when things are open, but all in all I would strongly recommend Chinon if you're ever in the area and haven't seen it.
Oh, and the sun actually came out! For a few minutes, anyway [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[zenda2]

Where better than Chinon for some Rabelaisian excess, eh?

[Thomas]

Joeyz, you make me jealous right now...