Wine with Leslie: Wines from the Loire - including a cut-price Rosé

"For me, the most exciting grape of the Loire is Chenin Blanc which is responsible for the long-lived and brilliantly complex dry and sweet wines of Vouvray and for the whites of Anjou and Saumur and the dry wines of Savennières."

A view over the Loire river in Nantes, France. Pic: Franck Tomps/LVAN.

Let’s start with a challenge — which wine region is the most diverse? There's just one region I can think of that offers quality sparkling wine, rosé, dry whites, demi-sec and sweet whites as well as complex reds. The region is also the closest quality wine region to Ireland, and is of course the Loire.

I visited for a week in April thanks to InterLoire (Vinsvaldeloire.fr) which promotes the region and covers a huge area from Muscadet south of Nantes to Anjou and Saumur to the east, to Touraine and Vouvray near Tours, and south to Haut-Poitou near Poitiers. And that’s just a few of the Loire's 31 appellations which grow 24 different grape varieties.