Montrichard and Cave des Roches

After we'd finished up at Chenonceau, we decided to check out an underground mushroom farm we'd heard about in Bourre, a few towns away. We found the place, but their tour schedule wasn't quite as advertised, and we ended up buying tickets for tour a couple hours later than we were expecting. We debated with each other in the car for a while about what to do in the meantime. I voted "nap in car" and Jeff voted "tour tour tour". Jeff won and I was reluctantly dragged back to the town of Montrichard.

We parked the car and walked around the main street of the town for a while. It was fairly picturesque.


Everything was closed because it was Sunday, but we did luck out and found an ATM that was affiliated with our bank back in the US (no ATM fees) and that saved us a trip into the city of Tours later that day.

We also stopped at a little winery that we'd spotted while driving around. We tasted a few of the local Loire wines, and picked up a couple of bottles for drinking with dinner over the next few days.

Eventually we made it back over to Cave des Roches for our tour of the mushroom farm. There is a huge underground stone quarry located in Bourre that produced much of the stone used to build the great chateaux of the Loire. At some point in the late 19th century, the owners of the facility decided to try their hand at growing mushrooms in some of the many unused corridors underground. They spent the better part of a century growing button mushrooms here, and then they decided to start focusing on more highly prized varieties instead.


The tour was given in French, so we didn't quite catch everything we were told. We were able to understand most of the production numbers and the names of the types of mushrooms produced.

These are Pieds Bleus:


These are Pleurotes Jaunes:


These are Pleurotes Grises:


These are Champignons de Paris:


The best part came when we arrived at the Shiitake growing area. Apparently Shiitake mushrooms are VERY rare in France. The reaction of the mostly French crowd to the rarity of the Shiitakes was pretty funny. Ooooh, aaaah. I was thinking, hmm, I'll bring you guys some of our Shiitakes and trade you for some really good cheese, foie gras, wine, mustard, etc.


We spent about an hour in the underground quarry. It was quite chilly in there, but not terribly damp, and it was HUGE. I'm pretty sure a person could get lost in there for days. We took enough turns on the tour that I was lost by the time we were ready to leave. Good thing we had a tour guide!