The French keep the Loire's best for themselves. Go there to discover it.

Last year, I wrote from California wine country about how frustrating we found the public face of even the boutique California wineries. In too many cases, ruthless packaging and promotion left us in the hands of marketers rather than winemakers. Tasting fees were high and staff knowledge was often low.  Even the places we rated most highly left a sour taste in our mouths, as the per-bottle price was typically far higher than European wines of equivalent quality.

 Back in the more comfortable (to us) environs of a European wine region, I am reminded of one of the main reasons for the American approach. European wine tourism is hard work.

The Loire has 185,000 acres under cultivation for wine (Napa, Sonoma and the Russian River valleys combine for 113,000), with three primary regions and eighty seven different official appellations across them. The range is staggering, with styles and grape varieties shifting completely from one village to the next. A few names are commonly known (Sancerre, Pouilly-Fume, Muscadet) but you quickly get into the more rare and unusual. Producers are dominated by small family operations. Physically, these are often as simple as a comfortable family home, a couple of barns for wine making equipment and a cellar cut into the region's soft limestone, with vines in a handful of fields spread across the immediate area. The vignerons tend to cluster in charming, quiet, crumbling old villages. You'll be driving through a landscape of wheat fields, orchards and vines ... or along the river ... feeling miles away from anything, when you stumble into one of these places. It's tiny, and seems almost abandoned, but on every corner you'll find small signs pointing to five or 10 different winemakers down the lane.

There are few billboards, fancy tasting rooms are rare and marketing employees non-existent. You'll drive into the farmyard, walk about, make some noise and hope to attract someone's attention. Eventually, a family member will emerge and greet your request to taste with anything from fluent English and great enthusiasm to taciturn French and a dignified but silent pour. If your French is no good, or you lack confidence, this can be a daunting experience.

There are no such things as tasting fees here, but tradition demands you buy at least one bottle in exchange for the time and samples of the producer. Winemakers inevitably warm up when you take them seriously. Discussions about soil conditions, potential for ageing, grape varieties and any reasonably accurate description of the flavours you're getting on your tongue will quickly move the experience from a business transaction to an afternoon chat with a friend. The prices in the Loire are, mercifully, a world away from the US$25 average for the Californian "starter" wines. In the Loire, that average is more like 8 Euro. The high teens gets you into special stuff and 20-something is reserved for exceptional names.

The big question is: how to decide who to visit amongst the thousands of vignerons here? You could wander aimlessly or select the prettiest winemakers' chateaux but, similar to picking a wine based on the attractiveness of its label, that's no guarantee of a good experience. We like to start at regional wine centres that showcase a variety of local producers but, other than a good one we found in Cheverny, this isn't really done in the Loire.

So I suggest a bit of online research before you go. It's amazing how quickly Decanter, Wine Spectator, Jancis Robinson and Berry Brothers and Rudd can combine to suggest the names worth a visit in an area. The problem with this, of course, is that they've already been "discovered" by the English market, so will charge a little more. To find the hidden gems, go to local restaurants and wine bars. Tell the waiter what you like and let him suggest. In France, the owners of small restaurants have a very personal relationship with their wine list, often building it themselves from favourite local producers.

Following those two tactics, we had a successful wine buying trip in the Middle Loire. We came home with 19 cases, split between the light red and crisp whites we were seeking ... with a few rogue bottles of sweet stuff and a rare dry, sparkling red thrown in. Here are our picks of the trip.

Saumur-Champigny
We were aware of Saumur as a wine region, but hadn't known that the appellation next door was considered by locals and experts to be the superior red. Usually Cabernet Franc with some Cabernet Sauvignon, this is perhaps the perfect compromise red for the Bencard household. It tends to have the lightness and sophistication my husband is looking for, while I appreciate the obvious fruit (soft red and black fruits, violets) without the mouth-puckering astringency I find too often in light reds.

Domaine des Glycines is the classic example of a tiny vigneron found through a restaurant. We'd put our faith in the manager of le Comptoir des Vins in Fontevraud, who'd paired a bottle of their Saumur-Champigny with a superlative quiche lorraine.  Egg dishes can be tough to match to wine; this was spot on. We headed off to find the tiny, family-run operation ... thank God for sat nav ... and, after tasting the produce of several years, bought the 2014 to lay down. (That's what we're loading into the car in the photo above.)

About 10 minutes closer to Saumur (but still producing in the Saumur-Champigny appellation), Chateau du Hureau is physically far more impressive ... with its own towered chateau on a steep bluff above the Loire. (They do B&B in estate cottages below. If I returned to the area I'd be very tempted.) Philippe Vatan's family has been making wine here for 300 years. His daughter has just joined the partnership to ensure another generation. Mentions from the top wine writers and a move to a fully organic operation help with that, too. We weren't doing badly in French, but Philippe's excellent English and some solid marketing materials here helped us to understand more about the wines. Unable to decide between them, we took home the Fours a Chaux 2014 and the Argile 2014. Better known, more sophisticated and with greater potential for aging than Glycines, Hureau wines are more expensive ... but still reasonable enough that we were happy to learn they would consider shipping cases to England in the future.

Chinon
This is another district famed for light reds, and Bernard Baudry gets regular mentions as a producer.  A particularly good tasting session here, in English, held next to glass cylinders of the soil from each field so we could understand the effect different conditions have on the grapes. My revelation: vines that have to struggle through the vitamin-rich but claggy heavy clay give the rich berry flavours I love best, and clay generally means wines that age for longer. We liked all of their reds, but gave the edge to Les Grezeaux. Made from their oldest vines (50 years and going strong), the maturity showed. Our favourite wine of the range, however, was the exceptional white Le Croix Boissee. It's a dry, mineral-heavy Chenin Blanc that was exactly the kind of white we were seeking, but produced in such small quantities they'd already sold out ... though they managed to find six bottles when our party bought plenty of other cases.

St-Nicolas de Bourgueil
As with Saumur and Saumur-Champigny across the river, Bourgueil (on the north side) is the bigger, better known and more widely-exported appellation ... while all the locals know that the fields of St-Nicolas de Bourgueil next door produce the better wine. The wines tend to be Cab Franc/Cab Sauv blends again, but St-Nicolas is reckoned to be more complex, with better potential for maturing into greatness. Most of the makers here tend to own a variety of fields in the area and thus produce both appellations.

Yannick Amirault seems to be the man of the hour, with plenty of write-ups and awards under his belt. He's another early adopter of organic farming, now a local hero for leading the way. Here's where my taste shows its cheap and cheerful side, as I found many of the St-Nicolas ... amongst the most expensive wines we tasted ... had that mouth-drying sharpness that, for me, often overwhelms the fruit in light reds. Thanks to tasting in Burgundy I recognise that astringency, however, as the flavour profile that develops into greatness. Besides, the most serious wine connoisseurs in our party were making the right noises. Our choice for the home cellar: Amirault's Les Quartiers 2014.

Cheverny & Cour-Cheverny
Though producing wines a bit less sophisticated in structure than the Bourgueil-Saumur-Chinon triangle, Cheverny will eternally live in our hearts as the one place in the Middle Loire than made an attempt at appellation-wide wine tasting. Their tasting room, featuring scores of local vignerons, made our shopping easy. Once again, we discovered a revered junior appellation. Cheverny is bigger and more exported, tiny Cour-Cheverny next door is more prized. (I'm starting to think it's a rule in the Loire to save a junior, little known appellation for the locals.)

The Domaine Le Portail 2014, plain old Cheverny, was our red wine that got away. We loved it at lunch but the Maison des Vin had sold out. The Renaud Dronne 2015 is going to get us close, especially after a year to catch up to the former's maturity. On the white side, the Cour-Cheverny Domaine de la Champiniere 2015 was our largest purchase of the trip, and great value at under 10 euro a bottle. We loved it so much we filled what was left of the boot ... four cases.

Vouvray
A different sort of lesson here. In England, we think of Vouvray as a cheap dry white. The French turn to the appellation for sparkling wine (it comprises more than 60% of Vouvray's production) and some highly revered sweet wines.

There is a co-operative shop in the village centre that offers tasting from multiple vignerons. It has far less variety than the Cheverny store, but is a good way to understand the appellation before heading to specific domaines. We weren't bowled over by anything here, just buying a couple of bottles to drink that night. Far more exciting was heading up into the hills to find some of the producers picked by the wine writers.

Domain Huet has possibly the most august reputation amongst serious wine fans of any place we'd visited on this trip. While they make a range, they are famous for their sweet and semi-sweet wines ... heralded by wine writer Jancis Robinson as "whites that last a century" and stocked lovingly by Berry Brothers and Rudd. These were the most expensive wines we bought, in the mid- to high-20s (euro) but we couldn't help ourselves. The Le Haut Lieu demi sec ... from the family's first vineyard, bought in 1928 ... is exactly what you imagine people mean by the phrase "nectar of the gods". Sweet and honeyed but not overpowering, this is the perfect wine for foie gras or a strong goat cheese. I'd love to try it with a curry, though the wine seems too sophisticated for such a basic dish!

Finally to Domaine Vincent Careme for excellent wines with a great story. Vincent and Tania Careme only started making wine in 1999, beginning with five acres passed on from Vincent's parents. Tania is a South African who had mixed her accountancy degree with her love of wine to work for vineyards in her home country. When she met Vincent on a French holiday and love took over, she moved from support services to being an actual wine maker ... thousands of miles from home. They've expanded their vineyards and done a remarkable job restoring a farmhouse and caves which had been a complete wreck, abandoned for three decades. Now 13 years since they moved in, you'd never know this charming enclave, partially built into the limestone cliff behind, hasn't been the family HQ for a lifetime. It's all Chenin Blanc here. They produce both still and sparkling, and there's quite a bit of difference as you taste labels from different parcels of land. Our favourite was the Le Peu Morier 2014.

The overwhelming majority of these wines aren't available in the UK. Each is a treasure of both taste, and holiday memories ... and most should be drinking particularly well Chez Bencard for the 2018-19 dinner party season.