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Updated: June 21, 2025
On returning from his trip through the southern departments, the illustrious Gaudissart occupied the coupe of a diligence, where he met a young man to whom, as they journeyed between Angouleme and Paris, he deigned to explain the enigmas of life, taking him, apparently, for an infant. As they passed Vouvray the young man exclaimed, "What a fine site!"
Mounted upon his horse, he trotted along the embankment thinking no more of his phrases than an actor thinks of his part which he has played for a hundred times. It was thus that the illustrious Gaudissart went his cheerful way, admiring the landscape, and little dreaming that in the happy valleys of Vouvray his commercial infallibility was about to perish.
A whole population of vine-dressers lives, in fact, in appalling insecurity in holes in their jagged sides for the whole way between Vouvray and Tours. In some places there are three tiers of dwellings hollowed out, one above the other, in the rock, each row communicating with the next by dizzy staircases cut likewise in the face of the cliff.
The men-at-arms were regaled with the best wine in the cellars, which was a present made to the monks of Turpenay by those of Marmoustier, to whom belonged the lands of Vouvray. The good abbot having had the document of the Sieur de Cande read, went about saying "On these divine occasions there always appears the finger of God, to whom we should render thanks."
You must line your inside with velvet if you are going to pump at it like that every day. Monsieur, the wine of Vouvray, if well kept, is downright velvet." "Now, what do you think of it all?" said Gaudissart, emptying his glass. "It is very fine, very new, very useful; but I like the discounts I get at my Territorial Bank, Rue des Fosses-Montmartre."
We were very comfortable, very genial; we even went so far as to say to each other that Vouvray mousseux was a delightful wine. From this opinion indeed one of our trio differed; but this member of the party had already exposed herself to the charge of being too fastidious by declining to descend from the carriage at Chaumont and take that back-stairs view of the castle.
"True," said the illustrious Gaudissart, "and all the more, Monsieur, when they pull down with one hand and build up with the other, like the apostles of the 'Globe." "They want good wine; Head of Vouvray, two puncheons, three hundred bottles, only one hundred francs, a trifle." "How much is that a bottle?" said Gaudissart, calculating.
"So you think," said the fool. "The trouble with our Vouvray wine is that it is neither a common wine, nor a wine that can be drunk with the entremets. It is too generous, too strong. It is often sold in Paris adulterated with brandy and called Madeira.
Here we had an hour with them in the garden where many flowers are abloom, and exchanged travel experiences and home gossip over brioches, the famous white wine of Vouvray and glasses of orange-flower water. Orange-flower water is the proper thing to drink here as it is made in large quantities in the neighborhood of Tours.
For his sins, after getting down at the Soleil d'Or, an inn kept by a former grenadier of the imperial guard named Mitouflet, married to a rich widow, the illustrious traveller, after a brief consultation with the landlord, betook himself to the knave of Vouvray, the jovial merry-maker, the comic man of the neighborhood, compelled by fame and nature to supply the town with merriment.
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