Loire

The Loire Valley offers refreshingly tart and tangy varieties made with the Sauvignon Blanc grape--try Richard Bourgeois (2003).

The mineral content of these subterranean limestone caverns brings out the distinctive character of Loire Valley wines.

White wines are the dominant force throughout most of the Loire and in the Upper Loire this means Sauvignon Blanc, which produces the tingling and stony dry wines of Sancerre, Pouilly Fume and lesser known Menetou-Salon.

In the middle Loire Chenin Blanc is king and comes in many guises, from the excellent dry Savennieres to crisp but sweeter wines of Vouvray and Montlouis and, finally, the luscious sweet wines of Coteaux de Layon and Bonnezeaux.

What is even more striking is that livestock insurance societies did not develop in cattle-raising regions like the Perche but were to be found in the more urbanized zones in the Loire Valley.

The parasite was first identified in the vineyards of the northern Loire valley in 1876, though it had probably already been present for ten years.

With his subsequent emphasis on exchange, "negotiation," and "strategies for protecting the family farm," Professor Lehning draws close to an analysis found in my own work on the Loire Country, although he does not mention it.

Certainly he fails to analyse individual farming units because he lacks the tools to do it: in the department of the Loire, he would have to coordinate data drawn from the civil registers (for family structures) with those of the cadastre (for property); this he refuses to do.

This "stampede" to the Penhouet and Loire shipyards in the 1880s meant important changes for Saint-Joachim workers and their families.(37) For them, the twelve kilometers from Saint-Joachim to Saint-Nazaire meant a long daily commute following a ten or twelve hour work day; for most, it meant lodging during the week in Mean, a village on the outskirts of Saint-Nazaire, and returning to their homes only on Saturday night.

By this time the shift in men's occupations to shipwright had given Saint-Joachim workers employment options: many worked at the Transat's Saint-Nazaire repair yard, a small number worked in local yards, while yet others awaited the opening of Penhouet and the Loire which would soon require a workforce of nearly 4,000.