The timeless village of Vouvray is at the geographical center of the Loire Valley wine region and the Touraine subregion. [Comment: Timeless because it has grown by only 1,000 residents since the late 18th century. I hear they’re still wearing powdered wigs. End Comment.]
To achieve the village’s coveted eponymous AOC certification for its eponymous Vouvray wine, local makers must make their (almost always unoaked) wines using only the Chenin Blanc grape.
The main church in Vouvray is dedicated to Saint Martin of nearby Tours, the patron saint of wine makers. And soldiers. And geese. His name is my saint name, but I have another connection to Vouvray. I distinctly remember my first encounter nearly 30 years ago with the not-grapefruity dry white wine as a wide-eyed American whipper-snapper in the City of Light that is Paris, France. Whereas I had ordered a voove-RAY, the waitress came back with a voove-RYE-ah, a sing-songy pronunciation that has stuck with me despite my better judgment and grasp of the language and the countless admonitions of countless francophones and countlesser French wine connoisseurs.
If I’ve learned anything from my complicated relationship with Vouvray over the last three decades, it’s never to take pronunciation cues from an uprooted peasant girl-turned-waitress from the Swiss Alps who doesn’t know the difference between speaking French and yodeling
I was talking about the wine 