The wines of Cheverny, or the legacy of a palace never built

1519. Eighty thousand vines leave their Burgundian cradle for the Sologne, on the orders of François I. Their destination: the surroundings of the château de Romorantin, where Louise of Savoy, the king’s mother, held her court, and where a palace designed by Leonardo da Vinci was to rise. The palace was never built. The vines stayed.

This is the detour by which Cheverny wine enters history. And it is what makes this vineyard so singular: the village where we welcome you possesses, alongside the appellation that bears its name, the only appellation in France devoted entirely to a grape grown nowhere else. It is called romorantin, after the town where it landed five centuries ago.

The grape of a palace never built

Back to the archives. In 1519, François I had eighty thousand vines transplanted from Burgundy to Romorantin, where his mother kept her court. That same year, everything shifted: Leonardo died at Le Clos Lucé in May, the great palace project was abandoned, and in September the royal building site settled on a Sologne marsh instead. That marsh would become Chambord, and we have told elsewhere what became of it. The king’s vines, however, did not follow the workmen. They took root.

Tradition made them “the vines of François I”, handed down as such from generation to generation. Modern ampelography, which reads grape varieties the way others read parish registers, adds a more surprising detail still: romorantin has the same parents as chardonnay. A brother of one of the most widely planted grapes in the world thus spent five hundred years within a twenty-mile radius, never once seeking its fortune elsewhere. A fine story, and for once the archives do not contradict it.

The century when it all nearly vanished

It was a close-run thing, though. At the end of the nineteenth century phylloxera devastated the vineyard, here as everywhere in France. Whole hillsides were never replanted, and romorantin, the most confidential of grapes, could have died out without a sound. A handful of stubborn families regrafted it, vine by vine. The photograph that opens this article shows the harvest at Cour-Cheverny in 1905, just as that reconquest was won: the same rows, the same gestures, a few minutes from our courtyard. At the Domaine des Huards, in Cour-Cheverny, the oldest romorantin vines still in production were planted in 1922 by Eugène Magloire Gendrier. Their grapes are still being picked, a century on.

Two appellations for a single church tower

It takes a little attention to read a wine map of these parts, and it is a taster’s pleasure as much as a historian’s. Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny, two villages ten minutes’ walk apart, carry two distinct appellations, recognised by the same decree of 26 March 1993, after twenty years spent as a “superior quality” appellation.

AOC Cheverny is a blended wine: sauvignon leading the whites, pinot noir and gamay for the reds and rosés. AOC Cour-Cheverny, for its part, knows only one grape, romorantin, in white only, across some fifty hectares spread over eleven villages. When you open a bottle of it, you are drinking a wine that exists, quite literally, nowhere else.

What is in the glass

Young, a cour-cheverny is a dry, keen wine of remarkable length, served chilled and on the fruit: asparagus, fish, scallops, white meats. It is with age that its true character unfolds. The robe takes on golden glints, honey and acacia join in, and it then partners dishes few whites dare look in the eye, from pan-seared foie gras to lobster. The winegrowers say it readily: this is a keeping wine that is almost always drunk too soon.

Cheverny white, more immediate, plays on the freshness of sauvignon. The red, light and fruity, takes very well to being served slightly cool at a summer table, out in the courtyard. Honest, digestible wines at still reasonable prices: the Loire Valley before the prize lists discovered it.

And as always here, the local table does half the work. A white cheverny with Sologne asparagus in spring, a barely chilled red with a goat’s cheese from the valley, a mature cour-cheverny with autumn game: the vineyard and the larder grew up together, and you can taste it.

The Maison des vins, facing the château

To taste before you choose, one address is enough. The Maison des vins de Cheverny, at 1 avenue du Château, faces the château gates: around a hundred wines are poured for tasting there, from some fifty growers of the two appellations and their 772 hectares.

Pushing open the doors of the estates

The Maison des vins is an antechamber: the vineyard is best understood with the people who make it. Many estates across the eleven villages receive visitors by appointment, and the Maison’s team keeps the list of those whose cellars are open. Ask for a ten-year-old cour-cheverny if the chance arises: it is the best way to understand, in a single glass, why this grape was worth a decree.

Then there is nothing left but to walk home, a bottle under your arm, along the rue Nationale. At Le Clos Amarante, the glasses are waiting in the dining room, and the courtyard was made for those late afternoons when one compares, with great seriousness, an appellation from 1993 and a grape five centuries old…

Information checked on 18 August 2026 on the official site of the Maison des vins de Cheverny and on that of the appellations’ growers’ association. Opening times and prices change: a glance at maisondesvinsdecheverny.fr before you set off.