- Location:
- The city of Valençay is the capital of the Canton bearing the same name, in the department of Indre.
- Several ways of access are possible: by the A10 exit in Blois; by the A20 exit N ° 10 to Vatan; by the A85 exit N ° 13 to Selles-sur-Cher.
- History:
- Valençay owes its name to the Gallo-Roman Valens who owned in this place a villa "Valenciacus" (Domaine de Valens). From the 3rd to the 5th century, workshops and buildings that housed among others an oven, a mill and a press were built around this villa.
- It is a fortress of stone which was raised end Xe early XIe to defend the country. At that time, the Knights Templar founded on their side beyond the Nahon River a commandery in 1160, the lower town develops in turn. The village of the church is built around the abbey.
- A feudal castle appears with the first lord of Valençay Bertrand Gauthier in 1220. One of his descendants, Alice of Burgundy, married Jean Bâtard of Châlon-Tonnerre in 1268.
- Exhausted by epidemics and the passage of troops, the small town of Valençay was granted a tax cut in 1410 by Charles of Orleans.
- The lordship passes into the hands of the Estampes family in 1451.
- Jacques 1er d'Estampes had the feudal castle razed in 1540 to begin the construction of the present castle. The Estampes family will contribute to the development of the city. In 1642, Dominique d'Estampes and Marguerite de Montmorency were at the origin of the foundation of the Ursuline Convent for the education of young girls.
- The city reached its apogee during the Great Century: it included a provost, a fiscal prosecutor, a registry, a small tabellionage with notaries and a seal contracts, whose national archives have a fragment. The wheat trade, the trial and arbitration transactions made it a very active little center.
- The gradual collapse of the Estampes family forced Henri-Hubert, ruined, to sell half of his estate to a financier named Law. The sale will nevertheless be stopped by order of the king. In 1747, Jacques-Louis Chaumont Million bought the land of Valençay. His daughter resells it in 1761 to Charles Legendre de Villemorien, farmer general of the king. It revives the economy of the city by founding a cotton mill, several forges and renovating the castle.
- The Ursuline Chapel served as a place for popular meetings under terror.
- Leading the forges of the city, the Count Luçay, son of Legendre Villemorien almost guillotined. Hidden for three days in the forest of Gâtines, he was arrested and then acquitted thanks to his wife who introduced him as "contractor for useful work in the Republic". In 1803 he gave up his domain to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, then Minister of Foreign Relations of the Consulate, who only obeyed Bonaparte's orders. Valençay became home to the diplomatic corps, ambassadors and rulers.
- In 1808, the castle was chosen by Napoleon as the residence of the Princes of Spain in exile. Ferdinand of Spain, his brother Don Carlos, and his uncle Don Antonio did not leave the country until 1814, after having signed a treaty regulating the Spanish affair.
- From 1816, Talleyrand contributed to the prosperity of the city. Member of the Municipal Council, mayor of Valençay, General Councilor, he reconstituted the spinning mill, founded by Villemorien who then supplied the factories of Châteauroux and Issoudun and she received a medal at the Paris exhibition. He had a new cemetery established and yielded land to build a town hall and the boys' school. He also founded the charity house, renovated the church whose bell tower imitates that of Vevey in Switzerland, and lavished all the care at the castle. He built a small theater for the Princes of Spain.
- The city took advantage of technical progress with the arrival in the region in 1892, water and gas lighting that gave rise to all kinds of festivities of the population in 1877. The construction of the station as a stopover Blanc-Argent, allowed the activity of the city to grow.
- It was spared before the wars of 1870-1871 and 1914-1918.
- During the Second World War it was a place of parachuting weapons and supplies for the maquisards hidden in the forests of Gâtines and Garsanland. On August 16, 1944, she suffered in particular from German reprisals. Arriving from Romorantin, the SS were looking for a wounded underground fighter. They visited the hospital, run by the sisters, who made believe in a maternity. They took hostages and set the city on fire and blood. Eight people were killed, forty buildings burnt down, including the post office and the house of charity, but the castle was spared thanks to the Duke of Paris and the curator of the Louvre who could parley. The firefighters of Châteauroux, Issoudun and Vatan were called in to extinguish the fires that lasted several days. On September 18, 1945, the Bronze Star War Cross was officially handed over to the city of Valençay by the Minister of Reconstruction and Urbanism.
- AOC: The AOC area of Valençay is linked to the Loire Valley heritage. Valençay is the only city in France that can boast two AOC / AOP bearing its name.
- The Valençay Pyramid AOP: The Valençay is a pyramidal goat's raw milk cheese, truncated at the top, bluish-gray in color. First cast in a ladle, the cheese then covers it with ashen salt. During ripening, with a minimum duration of eleven days, a fine bloomy rind encapsulates it. The annual production is about 350 tons for 21 farm producers. There are also 47 milk suppliers, 6 dairies and a refiner. The Pyramid PDO territory covers four agricultural regions: Boischaut Nord, Champagne Berrichonne, Brenne and Boischaut Sud, which represent 700,000 hectares. The cheese of Valençay obtained its Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée on July 13, 1998, which succeeds the Regional Label Valençay of the Indre, obtained in 1979.
- AOC wines of Valençay: Located in the North of the Indre and the South of Loir-et-Cher, the vineyard of Valençay covers about 150 hectares. The vines grow on three types of soils: flinty clays; sandy-gravel soils; clays with pods. The winemakers use ancestral know-how to develop a wine that combines the traditional grape varieties of the terroir of Valençay. The Red Valençay is the marriage of four grape varieties: Gamay, Côt, Pinot Noir and Cabernet. The Rosé wine uses these same four grape varieties as Pineau d'Aunis. While the white Valençay combines Sauvignon and Chardonnay. The annual production is 8,000 hectoliters, on average, generated by 22 winemakers and a cooperative. In 1970, the wine of Valençay received a designation VDQS (Wine of Superior Quality). Then on March 17, 2004, he obtains the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC).
