Sancerre, August 1-3

 It was just a little over 27 k and 5 locks to our next potential stop, one of the wine capitals of the region, Sancerre. Actually, Sancerre is at the top of the hill so the mooring is in a village at it’s base, Ménétreol-sous Sancerre. It’s a difficult mooring with sloping sides so careful fendering is needed and there’s not room for many boats. Luckily there are no hotel barges operating this year that we’ve seen. Last time we were here we were kicked out by one.

We arrived kind of late in the day, after 4 o’clock, but there were no other boats so we had our pick of spots. A little later another hire boat joined us and the next day the tie up would be full. The boats are coming in waves this year, mostly we think because it’s almost all hireboats and they seem to be all on the same schedule.

As you can see, the village is surrounded by vineyards, mostly planted with the sauvignon blanc grape, although there is some pinot noir for the Sancerre Rouge. On the west side of the Loire the wine is labeled Sancerre while the Pouilly Fumé comes primarily from the east side of the river.

It was a sunny, cool day. No rain for a change so we hiked up the hill on a well marked path through the woods and vineyards to the village.

The village of Ménétreol with Sancerre up the hill.

This is the Sancerre terroir. More rocks than dirt.

Those vines have to struggle!

We didn’t need to buy anything in town as our wine locker was well stocked and it was quite a hike back to the boat. We just wandered about town doing the tourist thing and picked a pizza restaurant for lunch. We enjoyed a well-made pie and a quarter liter of the local red. We did have a chuckle at the “knife” they gave us to cut our shared pizza in half, though.

Tuesday morning it was off again, further up the Loire lateral canal. We had a couple stops we wanted to make before we reached the end of the Nivernais. The weather was not supposed to be great, scattered rain and continued cool so there wasn’t much off-the-boat sightseeing to do and we decided to just keep moving. Since we’d be back along here in a couple of weeks we didn’t need to get wet but we were making careful note of the stops we wanted to make on our return.