Touraine-Amboise () is an Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) in the Loire Valley wine region in France. It is situated within the wider Touraine AOC wine appellation. It is produced by ten communes bordering both sides of the River Loire. To their west lies the town of Amboise, with its royal château. Since its separation from the Touraine AOC in 1954, Touraine-Amboise has constituted an AOC in its own right. Annual production stands at 9,000 hectolitres of wine, spread between red, rosé, and still white wines. Effervescent wines are also produced within this AOC's boundaries, but they are not entitled to use the Touraine-Amboise appellation, belonging instead to the Touraine appellation.Décret n° 2009-1253 du 16 octobre 2009
History
Prehistory and antiquity
There is evidence that people were living on the sloping hillsides of this middle stretch of the Loire as early as palaeolithic and neolithic times. The Châtelliers plateau, on the edge of which the Château of Amboise is built, contains one of the Loire region's most important Chasséen neolithic sites.Le site chasséen du plateau des Châtelliers à Amboise – G Cordier – Revue archéologique du centre de la France – Joué-lès-Tours – 1995 – V34 – pp. 109–155 An axe made with local stone and a dagger made with stone from the Grand-Pressigny region, have been discovered to the west of the market town of Limeray.Christian Guyon (conseiller général et maire d'Amboise, Le canton d'Amboise, published ca 2002, p. 24 Significant permanent settlements seem to have grown up at the start of the Bronze Age (approximately 5,000 years BC), while large-scale planting of the valleys dates from the final period of the Bronze Age, between 1,200 and 750 BC.Guide bleu Hachette, Centre, 1991, pp. 58–59 At that time, following the last glacial period, vines already existed in their wild state as a kind of creeper growing on the edges of forests and on stony soils, but wine-making was as yet undiscovered.
In the first century AD the geographer, Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD), described wine-growing in Gaul as well-developed, but made no specific mention of wines produced along the banks of the Loire.Pliny the Elder, Natural History, XIV Whereas the Nantes wine-growing area dates back to the Roman occupation, popular tradition links the start of vine cultivation in the province of Touraine (in the middle section of the Loire's course) to the founding of Marmoutier Abbey by St Martin in 372 AD. The fall of the Roman empire, and the turbulent centuries of the early Middle Ages that followed, interrupted the development of wine production, and the use of wine was restricted to religious practices and medical applications, in both cases dispensed by monasteries. This was documented by Sulpicius Severus, writing about meals at Marmoutier Abbey at the end of the 4th century: "Everyone gathered to break the fast and eat together; there was no wine provided except when illness demanded it".Sulpicius Severus, Life of saint Martin, ch. X Several legends about the effects of drinking wine or pruning vines are linked to St Martin of Tours.
Middle Ages
No information is available regarding wine-growing or wine production in the area directly around Amboise during the Middle Ages. One can only make deductions from what is known of the wine-growing history of the region, and assume that local circumstances would not have differed greatly.
In the High Middle Ages, the oldest record seems to be that of Gregory of Tours who described the damage caused to the vines by bad weather in the spring of 587. He refers on several occasions to vines growing near to the Basilica of St Martin of Tours. At the time the Basilica owned the villa at Nazelles close to Amboise, but there is no way of ascertaining whether the latter was planted with vines at that period.Grégoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs, édition des Belles lettres, collection «Classiques de l'Histoire», Paris, 1980
From the 11th century onwards the majority of monasteries and abbeys strung out along the banks of the Loire were involved in wine-growing, taking full advantage of the opportunity for transporting wine by river. A text dating from this time describes how a cleric from Chinon used this mode of transport to take his wine to Nantes.Issue de La vie et les miracles de saint Mexme XIe, cité dans Les vins de Loire, Éditions Montalba, 1979, p. 31
Renaissance The popularity of Touraine wines was due in no small part to the earthy writings of the French author, Rabelais, and his panegyric, "The Divine Bottle":
Amboise wines were especially enjoyed by the French king, Louis XI, who published a charter stipulating that Amboise wines should be sold before all other wines at the market in Tours.Cité par la Commanderie des Grands Vins d'Amboise sur son site officiel In 1477 he also introduced an annual gift of one hundred muids (one muid equalled eight French cubic feet) of wine to the monks of Canterbury Church.Jules Tardif, Archives nationales de France, 1977 Touraine wine was also routinely served at the table of the French king, François I, who was apparently moved to comment: "Even though I was not born in Amboise, I grew up there, and all my life the taste of that divine draft from the beautiful city of Tours, so dear to my heart, has remained with me".Citation figurant sur la contre étiquette des vins de la Prévôté, domaine de Serge et Pascal Bonnigal
Modern period
Two main factors contributed to the growth of Touraine wines between the 16th and 19th century. The first was a decree issued by the Paris parliament on 14 August 1577, forbidding Paris wine merchants to obtain their supplies from anywhere within twenty leaguesAvant 1674, il s'agissait de l'ancienne lieue de Paris, d'une longueur de mètres, soit une distance d'environ 65 km. of the city.Interdiction annulée en 1776 par un édit royal. Since the Loire Valley was easily accessible by road from the capital, demand rapidly increased firstly in the province of Orléanais, then in the province of Touraine. The second factor was the popularity of the Loire Valley's white wines with Dutch buyers. The latter installed agents, charged with overseeing their imports at close quarters, in several Loire Valley trading posts, including Amboise.
To all intents and purposes, the Dutch agents were middle-men, stocking and selling on French wines to the whole world and making a considerable profit in the process. Colbert (Louis XIV's finance minister) attempted to break their monopoly by creating a trading company that could deal directly with the markets. The Dutch retaliated by levying a heavy surcharge on various French manufactured articles, as well as French brandy and wine.André Cochut, Le ministère de Colbert, Revue des Deux Mondes, T.15, 1846 Wikisource Exports slowed down, with the regrettable result that the focus of production shifted from quality to quantity. A further undesirable effect was that cereal crops were often abandoned in favour of wine-growing, regardless of the land's suitability.
Contemporary history At the start of the 19th century wine-growing became one of the mainstays of the local economy. For this reason the devastation caused by the dual scourge of mildew and phylloxera that hit the region in 1882 came as a particularly heavy blow. The extent of the damage was even greater because the wine-growers initially refused to pull up their vines, trying instead to treat them with carbon disulfide, though without success. "As far as the phylloxera is concerned, the wine-growers were wrong, at the start, not to fight it.They allowed it to get completely out of hand. Nevertheless the wine-growers' unions have succeeded at many levels in keeping production at full capacity. In the Touraine area, however, there is no such flurry of activity. In his report to the General Council of the department of Indre-et-Loire, the Prefet (official in charge of a French department) does not even mention the situation. The general reaction is one of complete indifference. The local temperament militates against any attempt to take effective action, and at the same time political animosities are distracting everyone from the true problems of this region. However, the Touraine wine-growing area has already lost many vines and there are frequent cases of vines being pulled up.En fait près de la moitié des vignes seront arrachées A vast fortune is disappearing".Ardouin Dumazet, Voyage en France, Berger-Levrault, 1910 [Ardouin Dumazet, A Journey through France, etc.]There is, however, a vine in the Touraine region, planted around 1850 and rediscovered in 1998, that successfully resisted phylloxera and is now probably the oldest vine in France.
Following the introduction of new grape varieties, grafted onto American rootstocks, the vineyards were built up again between 1901 and 1905. In spite of these measures, the decline continued with a series of crises caused firstly by the collapse of stock market prices in 1906–1907, then by over-production in 1922–1923. It was only after the Second World War that the tide began to turn, thanks to improvements in quality due to the use of "noble" grape varieties, and increased demand for quality effervescent wines as an alternative to Champagne. The growth of tourism was also a crucial in boosting sales of the wine produced.
Award of AOC status
In 1954, the wine-growing area located around the Château d'Amboise, which was originally classed as part of the "Coteaux-de-Touraine"Devenue en 1953 Touraine (AOC)|l'AOC touraine AOC by the decree passed on 24 December 1939, was granted its own appellation of Touraine-Amboise. The new appellation originally covered nine communes in the department of Indre-et-Loire, three on the left bank of the Loire (Amboise, Chargé and Mosnes) and six on the right bank (Cangey, Limeray, Pocé-sur-Cisse, Nazelles-Négron, Saint-Ouen-les-Vignes and Montreuil-en-Touraine). The commune of Saint-Règle (on the left bank) was added to the appellation by the decree of 2 August 2005.Décret officiel de constitution de l'AOC In 1967 the Commanderie des Grands Vins d'Amboise (the Order of the Great Wines of Amboise) was established to ensure that the wines were well promoted.
Etymology The etymological origins of the Touraine-Amboise appellation are relatively self-explanatory. It is made up of the name of the former province of Touraine (which derived its name from its Gallic inhabitants, the TuronesSelon certaines sources, l'oppidum d'Amboise pourrait même avoir été la cité d'origine des Turones), combined with the name of the town of Amboise, the most famous of the appellation's constituent communes.
Geographical location
Orography The territory of the communes of the Touraine-Amboise AOC consists primarily of a plateau that lies between 105 and 130 metres above sea level. This is divided in two by the wide valley of the Loire, which lies, on average, at about 55 metres above sea level and is bordered on either side by often steeply sloping hillsides.[Notice de la carte géologique d'Amboise (XIX-22) publiée par le Bureau de recherches géologiques et minières
Geology