Loire Valley’s best food & drink

The Loire Valley is a remarkable and vast wine region, including several wine regions situated along the Loire River.

It encompasses a mind-boggling 63 appellations (47 in the core Tours, Saumur, Anjou area) and more than 7,000 wine growers, producing all types of wine from sweet white Coteaux de Layon, dry white Savennières and sparkling Vouvray, to hearty red Borgueil, Saumur and Chinon. Loire wines tend to exhibit a characteristic fruitiness with fresh, crisp flavours.

Vineyards dominate the landscape, troglodyte wine cellars are dug into the soft tufa rock, and there are signposted routes and welcome signs to help you, making this a fascinating – and easy – wine region to explore.

Set along the edge of the Loire River, in the shadow of the Chateau d’Amboise, this famous outdoor Sunday food market hawks local goats cheese, meats, fish and wine, plus fresh fruit and vegetables from farms around the region.

This series of cool, dank caverns in Montsoreau is said to have once been inhabited by loups (wolves), then exploited as quarries, before being turned into a champignonnière (mushroom farm). Button, oyster and shitake mushrooms are cultivated here today.

Just south of Chinon, this small specialist manufacturer of goats’ cheese offers guided tours of their farm, explaining their traditional manufacturing process, followed by tastings paired with Chinon wine.

This troglodyte restaurant serves delicious traditional fouaces, circular flatbreads, filled with mushrooms and cheese, and served in caves used as refuges during the 16th-century Wars of Religion.

Smack bang in the middle of Tours this wonderful covered market houses 38 stalls piled high with the best of the region’s produce. You can sign up for cooking demonstrations too and learn how to make the regional classics.

A fabulous specialist chocolate manufacturer offering guided tours of its workshop and chocolate-making lessons, plus a bar entirely dedicated to chocolate drinks and cakes.