Advertisement
Remy Martin Cognac
There are 29 cellars in which most of the walls are covered in a black fungi as a result of the evaporation in the barrels of alcohol. Each barrel loses about 2% of it’s volume each year. A short drive from the Atlantic coast is Dinan, a quaint, cobblestoned, village. Our B&B was built in the 15th century facing the village square which is very centrally located. Debra did a great job in booking our accommodation as most of the places have been in convenient locations, clean and comfortable and reasonably priced. The trade off to those benefits were accessibility by car, parking and narrow winding stairs. Most of the times, we just took what we needed out of our suitcases which made the logistics of getting in and out a little easier. Of course, many of these places were built when the average person’s height was about 5ft. 5 inches so I was constantly battling the doorways etc. and the stone arches always win!!!
On our way to Bordeaux, we detoured to Cognac with a visit to the Remy Martin cellars. The 1 hour tour was very informative on the process of making Cognac. The company was established in 1724 and is still family owned. Cointreau is also part of the product range but it was made at another facility. All of the Cognac for their global markets are stored here in 29 Cellars each holding
12,000 oak barrels containing 330 litres of product. If you do the math, it works out to 4 million litres. They are kept for various number of years and blended to achieve a specific taste profile. They offer a bottle of Louis X111 Cognac that sells for EU 3,000 and is blend of 40 -100 year old “eaux-de-vie ( the distilled wine that is kept in barrels). For those that don’t know, “VS” stands for “very superior” and ”VSOP” stands for “Very Superior Old Pail” (Wasn’t able to determine why the name pail was used?)
The city of Bordeaux, population 250,000, is at the center of this wine region. At one time it was fairly industrialized but over the past few years as been transformed into a very livable, walkable city with a well developed river front. The LRT (light rail transport) is modern, efficient and circles the inner core. We stayed for 2 nights in a small boutique Hotel that was quite nice and very close to the center. In hindsight, we should have left the car outside the city as it’s a nightmare to drive or park. The streets are narrow and jammed with parked cars. They
The Cite du Vin in Bordeaux.
Very unique architecture in this wine themed museum. go in all directions, some one way and to top it off, there was lots of construction with street closures and detours. It was a fun time for the GPS!!
“Cite du Vin“ was a large facility on the waterfront of Bordeaux that provided a fairly indepth orientation on wine making. It was quite educational but we felt poorly organized for the amount of people that were visiting. There was a section on the wine regions of the World in which Canada was included, however, it only featured Okanongan Valley and not Niagara on the Lake. Some better promotional work appears to be in order for our local Niagara Wine Association. In Bordeaux, we took a break from French food and had a Lobster roll for dinner our first night and Japanese grill the following evening. The Lobster was from Canada because European Lobster is more expensive. It is claimed European Lobster has a better quality meat but we have yet the opportunity to compare? It is hard to believe any Lobster would be better than those served at New Glasgow Hall in PEI !!
Before leaving the Bordeaux region we stayed in Saint-Emilion about a 1 hour
The Miroir d’eau in Bordeaux
The largest reflecting pool in the World. Water seeps up through the black stone creating the mirror effect. drive from the city of Bordeaux. It’s a popular destination for tourists with lots of wine shops and wineries in the area. The overnight visit was short, but we did manage to tour an interesting Church that was carved out of a very large limestone rock and took in a couple of winery tours with the obilgatory tastings. Our dinner that evening was excellent and included Escargot, Cogs au Vin and a very exquisite Hake fish cooked to perfection. This was our first “gourmand” meal in France and the taste and presentation was superb. Oh!! I forgot to also mention the “to die for” dessert.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.267s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0703s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb