How can I book accommodations?
Just send us an e-mail. We book one group per week and can accommodate up to 6-8 guests in our colorful two-bedroom 19th-century fisherman’s trinity, in the historic artists’ village of Trentemoult, just across the Loire River from Nantes and at the door-step of the Muscadet wine region. We also offer customized hiking / biking /wine tasting / architectural tours of the surrounding area, including the wild maritime coast to the west and the Loire Valley wine / castle region to the east.
Please contact us for more info: mainline.francophone@gmail.com
Do you directly sell and ship wine?
No, we’re not importers / exporters; we’re strictly wine scouts. If you have questions about certain wines, vintages, wineries, and producers in the Loire Valley, we have all the answers.
What is the local cuisine in Nantes?
Oysters, oysters, and more oysters! How else can you really enjoy a crisp glass of Muscadet? Nantes is the Maine of France, so be prepared for a fresh diet of fish and shellfish: oysters, mussels, langoustines, spider crabs, sea bass, sardines, mackerel, anchovies, and, of course, baby eels (locally known as civelles). These are usually served with such delicious sauces as Beurre Blanc and Beurre Nantais. You also have the traditional dishes of Brittany, such as crêpes, galettes, and even algae bread, along with strong cheeses such as Curé Nantais (the Monk of Nantes). Oh and Nantes is a chocolate factory (LU, BN, Galettes Saint-Michel were all founded there), so be ready for a lots of sweets and pies, including my mom’s famous gâteau nantais rum cake. We could go on and on…
Do you make dietary accommodations?
No. We want to be clear about this fact. Nantes is a maritime city where it is customary to eat seafood, cheese, galettes / crêpes, yogurt, and bread. If you cannot safely consume shellfish, wheat products, or dairy, then you’ll have a hard time here. There is no other way around it, unfortunately.
Do you offer tours independently of your retreat?
Of course. If you would prefer to arrange your own accommodations (be they budget or otherwise), we can design custom daily itineraries that suit your preferences. Related, if you stay at our retreat but would prefer an extended tour of the Brittany coast or the inland wineries and castles of the Loire Valley, we can arrange that as well.
What’s with the rooster?
Our logo actually won an international award and appears as a LogoLounge case study. Here is a truncated summary of our write-up…
For the Main Line Francophone logo, we (Mark D’Onofrio and Alberto Vacca Lepri — www.vacaliebres.com) originally envisioned a design referencing the historic Cunard transatlantic cruise line, as the Queen Mary and Queen Mary II were both built in Saint Nazaire (which, although another city, is pretty much an industrial extension of Nantes). But we felt that there was a more fundamental connection between Philadelphia and Nantes: both are post-industrial riverine cities that have evolved in tandem with their maritime shipping industries. So we instead explored mid-century coast guard, merchant marine, and commercial shipping symbols and then settled on something more militaristic, a hybrid logotype of a patriotic rooster (an unofficial symbol of France, derived from the homonym gallus or rooster and Gallus or Gauls) that, along with the beret, the same three national colors for both France and US, the stars and stripes of the American flag, and even the determined countenance of the rooster, which could have been painted on the nose of a bomber or the side of a battleship, evoked positive feelings of both the French resistance and the Allied forces that liberated western France. This evolution seems quite random now, but in hindsight, if one refers to the process sketches, it was very iterative: the smoke stack of the Queen Mary 2 became the literal rooster.
