This is a joyful trip, but also a thoughtful one. Here’s what to expect

Wine & War in the Loire is a journey through beauty, danger, and historical complexity. Set in one of the most breathtaking regions of France—where vineyards, riverbanks, chateaux, and medieval towns seem timeless—we’ll explore a moment in history when the everyday was anything but ordinary.

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This seminar invites us into a past shaped by occupation, resistance, and something more complicated: coexistence. For the people of the Loire Valley, the German presence wasn’t something that could be escaped—it had to be lived with. That reality led to extraordinary acts of courage and quiet defiance. But it also led to compromise, accommodation, and, in some cases, collaboration. In France, that word—collabo—still carries the weight of betrayal, and the shame of it lingers in the national memory.

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We will explore stories of ingenuity, resilience, and resistance: a bottle of wine hidden behind a false wall, a coded message passed in a baguette bag, a route memorized by heart. But we’ll also talk about the moral gray zones—what it meant to survive, to comply, to benefit, or to look the other way.

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This is not a seminar of simple heroes and villains. It’s one of choices— of navigating fear and survival in a time of occupation. It asks us to engage with the past not as something distant; but as something that unfolded in kitchens, vineyards, cafés, and quiet corners of towns like the ones we’ll visit.

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You may find yourself sipping sparkling wine in a cave where German soldiers once stood. You may walk through a village where locals knew who was helping the Resistance—and who was not. And you may be struck by how little of that past is marked, and how much of it still hums beneath the surface.

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There will be joy. There will be wine. There will be laughter, great meals, and sunsets over the Loire. But there will also be moments of reflection—on power, complicity, memory, and what it means to live under watch.

We invite you to bring curiosity, compassion, and a willingness to hold complexity. We’re not here to pass judgment—but to understand what it meant to survive, resist, and remember.

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We hope to share this experience with you.

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— Anne-Marie & Rob
Co-founders, Passport Perspectives Abroad

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