Our Blog - Loire Valley Trip - Turquant, France

Turquant is a very small village, just over 500 people, that we stayed at for a couple nights. It is small, but the population is relatively young compared to the department. It seems like a very touristy town, with lots of wine producers, lots of art boutiques, and a few interesting things. A bit of odd trivia: In the second half of 1961, 6 Algerian leaders were under house arrest at the Château de Turquant, including 2 future presidents of the Algerian Republic (Ben Bella and Boudiaf).

This is a wine plateau, among the oldest in the area. We took Lucy for a walk that took us up to the plateau, above the town, with vines as far as the eye could see.

We were told about "Pommes Tapées" (literally tapped apples) from another couple who stayed at one of the B&Bs. We had never heard of them but since we were staying literally a 5-minute walk from them, we couldn't *not* stop by! This is inside of a troglodytic site (so a cave carved into the rock cliff) and it has a museum associated with it that we didn't go through. At the end of the 19th century, this cellar was at the center of production for the famous “Pommes Tapées” apples of Turquant. The wine production here was ruined by the phylloxera epidemic and so the people here looked for another industry. They found it in "tapped apples", which was a way of preserving perishable apples by drying them .. with a twist. The apples are dried in ovens built into the caves for 5 days, turning daily and "tapped" with a little hammer to flatten them out. They are then bottled and can be kept for up to 10 years.

Near the apple place were several art galleries and all around town are insects, mostly spiders, that have been created out of what seems to be metal waste products. This one was next to the church in the middle of town, but others we saw perched on the cliffs during our walk.

We were not very successful in visiting much of the Troglodyte sites. For centuries, stone was removed from the cliffs to build houses and churches. Where the stone was removed, other things moved in. At first, it was people who made their homes in the caves, then wine producers who used the caves as wine cellars. Now, restaurants, hotels, guest houses, and B&B have decided to take advantage of the unique charm of a cave. For example, if you are going to go by there after reading the blog, you may want to check out "Pierre et Lumière", a "miniature park". Set in a cave are miniatures of the most beautiful churches, towns, villages and châteaux in the area, carved into the soft tuffeau stone.

There are also several sites dedicated to mushrooms, like the mushroom museum and the mushroom cellars at Saut-aux-loups. This latter one is a group of 15th century troglodytic dwellings that lead to a maze of galleries, once used for mushroom production. When producing mushrooms in a cave, you need a ventilation shaft like this one remove gases that the mushrooms cannot handle.

A list of the various troglodyte sites can be found at this page from the Office of Tourism site.