Domaine Maison, Cheverny

Domaine Maison Père et fils is the largest winery in the Cheverny AOC. It's just outside of Sambin. Like many wineries here, they see themselves as farmers, not a tourist attraction, so the wine is produced in a large corrugated iron shed next to the house. In one corner of the shed is a small bar and that's where you go to taste the wine before purchasing. We parked Claudette in the shade of a pechier des vignes, right in front of the vines.

The young winemaker, who had drawn the short straw on a very hot day, emerged from the longère which serves as farmhouse and office to conduct our tasting session. We tasted Révelation, their white sauvignon/chardonnay blend, the rosé, which is a blend of Pineau d'Aunis, gamay and cabernet franc, and a red pinot noir / gamay / côt (malbec) blend. I really liked the white, which has an unexpected and astonishingly powerful floral tropical fruity nose (certainly a surprise, if not exactly a revelation...). The rosé is an interesting salmon pink colour, and I'm always happy to drink a Pineau d'Aunis rosé. They do a crémant de Loire as well, but we decided against tasting it.

The day we visited bottling was in full swing, so the place was fairly noisy with clattering bottles.

If you want to visit this winery I suggest making an appointment by telephone (they probably won't respond to email). They will ask you if you are a particulier (ie a private individual, as opposed to a wine professional or someone from the tourist industry) Neither of the people I spoke to spoke English. My guess is that they have someone on the team who does though -- the English on their website is fairly good. They don't charge for a private tasting for one or two couples who arrive by car.

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Travelling with Wine: Recently we met Bénédicte and Paul, a young couple who run Lazenne, a specialist business supplying wine packaging and luggage to individual travellers. Paul was born in Poland but grew up in Canada. He came to Lyon to study, met Bénédicte, who is French, and never went back. We liked them a lot, and their product, and will be referring clients to them and taking delivery of their products on behalf of clients. They've written a very handy instruction leaflet for bringing wine home from your travels internationally, pointing out that it is perfectly possible to inexpensively bring several boxes of wine for personal use through customs if you want to. Their products range from polystyrene forms to hold bottles, with or without wheeled luggage cases, to self inflating bottle bags, and they are listening to customers all the time and bringing in new lines (stick on strap handles, no-sweat icepacks, etc). We think they've spotted a real gap in the market, because curiously, this sort of product didn't seem to exist in France before.