Wines and SpiritsLoire Valley Is Not Only About Castles - Chateau de la Bonneliere
Loire Valley is amazing region with beautiful landscape, historic cities, villages and many great ChÃþteaux. It is area where you can breathe history, visit Leonardo da Vinci´s thomb or town of Jeane d´Arc. It is land that has been cultivated for centuries. It may be that it is the reason why the Loire Valley wine tastes so differently.
Loire wine region is situated along the Loire River from Muscadet region near Nantes on the Atlantic coast to the region of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé southeast of Orléans in north central France. It includes regions Anjou, Saumur, Bourgueil, Chinon, and Vouvray. While the majority of production is white wine from the Chenin blanc, Sauvignon blanc and Melon de Bourgogne grapes, there are red wines made (especially around the Chinon region) from Cabernet Franc.
ChÃþteau de la Bonnelière is located in the southern part of Chinon Appellation and it covers 15 hectares. Chateau was established in 1846 by family Plouzeau.
The soil consits from flint and clay. ChÃþteau is known for not using any chemicals during the wine production and growing. Only the top quality grapes are selected. The grapes are manually harvested into baskets to protect them from damage.
As the wines are blended and bottled, they are stored in cave under Chinon castle with costant temperature at 12° C and hygrometry at 80%. The cave can store 150 000 bottles on 1500 square metres. Stones extracted from this cave were used during construction of Chinon castle.
If you like ruby red color wines with aroma of red fruits, try Chinon from Chateau de la Bonneliere. Their mainstream wine - Chinon has ruby-red color and aroma of merello cherries and redcurrant. When it is bottled, it is well-balanced with an excellent tannic quality and taste of freshness and notes of liquorice.
Chateau de la Bonneliere produces one very special wine called Ante Phylloxera with yearly production only 1200 bottles. The wine is made from exceptional vines (Cabernet Franc) in fenced 40 acres area, which survived the phylloxera in 1860. The vines are so close to each other and machines cannot be used - all operation is done manually.
If you want to know more about Chateau de la Bonneliere or wines from Loire region, visit our website about French wine.