Castles, kilts and a glass of sancerre

‘Oh, my sainted aunt,” I muttered. I am easily overcome. The French lady accompanying me knew she was making me happy. We were in the former village school of Epineuille-Fleuriel, south of Bourges in the centre of France. The low-slung school, shut in 1991, had since been restored to its state of around 1900, for old time’s sake. Maps of the world shared wall space with posters about germination. Lines of wooden desks – black, sloping, inkwells at the top – filled the two rooms. The surroundings were thick with the fug of children long gone.

My companion, villager Marilyn Touzet, indicated the desk on the far right of the front row. “This is where Alain-Fournier sat, right by the window,” she said. I briefly stopped breathing, then invoked my aunt. I couldn’t quite believe it. I was exactly where the fledgling Alain-Fournier had sat, the spot from Alain-Fournier, below, based his 1913 novel ‘Le Grand Meaulnes’ on life in Berry, central France where he had derived inspiration and a setting for Le Grand Meaulnes, the biggest-selling French novel of the 20th century. And maybe the best. The tale of boyhood, first love and adventure, of reality enhanced by longing, all “dressed… in a halo of mystery”, is irresistible. I am grateful beyond measure that they recreated the school just as it had been in Alain-Fournier’s time. It was some moments before I spoke. Alain-Fournier readily conceded the semi-autobiographical nature of his book, published in 1913 when he was 27. The school and teachers – his own parents – are easily recognisable, as is the village (renamed Sainte-Agathe in the novel). The surrounding Berry region – deep, green and much bypassed – is present, too, exhaling a sense of lurking secrecy. On these foundations, the young writer erected a story rooted in the real but soaring towards the marvellous, as adolescent minds will. Thus it attains a sort of universality. It missed winning the 1913 Prix Goncourt – France’s Booker Prize – by one vote. Alain-Fournier was killed the following year, in the opening weeks of the Great War. His great novel was his first and last.

I had just reread it. It was time to return to the Berry. “You coming?” I asked my wife, mentioning lost villages, rustic ways and the sense of stepping two paces to the side of contemporary France.

“No,” she said. So I went alone. So she missed not only Alain-Fournier but also outstanding examples of the ancien régime, the only Scottish town in France (read on, referendum fans) and, first, the wines of Sancerre. These, it is said, “always delight the palate of an honest man”. This is correct. I like them very much.

The town of Sancerre itself is a hill-topping labyrinth overlooking both the Loire and a well-ruffled landscape patchworked with vines. Its streets were created for peasants rather than Peugeots. I may have run down a pensioner or two.

What you need to know – the Maison-des-Sancerre in the middle of town will tell you – is that Sancerre is world HQ of sauvignon blanc and 50 years ago everyone was broke. Down the hill in the stone village of Chavignol is the Henri Bourgeois winery. On one wall is an early-Fifties photograph of Mme Bourgeois. She is standing in an unmade, run-down village street, with her six goats. Elsewhere, she had a pig, a cow, some hens and rabbits and four acres of vines whose poor wine sold badly. These days, her son Raymond has designer spectacles, a shiny winery, vintages exported everywhere and, along with other family members, a vineyard in New Zealand.

“We moved from the middle ages to the 21st century in 40 years,” he said, pouring. Outside, the village was buffed with prosperity. The story was the same across the appellation, in Thauvenay. There, the sancerre from the Eric Louis vineyard proved as good value as any. But… another thing to remember: avoid the subject of soil types. Wine-makers will go on about them until you pass out. Change the subject or leave. I did – for Aubignysur-Nère.

Here is a half-timbered French country town in a Caledonian cloak. The Saltire is ubiquitous, high-street shops have kilted blokes adorning their façades and there’s a 10ft monument to the Auld (Franco-Scots) Alliance outside the library. The place

The Berry region boasts fine wine, literary ghosts and France’s only Scottish town, says Anthony Peregrine

The former village school at Epineuille-Fleuriel, left, restored as it was when author Alain-Fournier was a pupil there