This morning slightly spoilt by the discovery that I had made a mistake booking the Camping-Car Park, and our stay both last night and tonight was due to end at 08:30. I thought at first I would have to pay an extra night's fees, but, in fact, one only has to pay €6, like you do when you just use their services. Anyway, I got in touch with them and enquired, and they kindly refunded me the €6, which was nice of them. But I do wish they wouldn't advertise their sites as having WiFi when they do not, so annoying!
Anyway, when we were ready we used the services and headed on. Our first port of call was a Super-U for bread and one or two other things - I ended up buying more cheese than I intended, but we didn't eat it for lunch as I bought leek tarts which we had with salad. We stopped to have this in a little village which rejoice in the name of Pissos! And on the same direction-board, but unfortunately underneath rather than above, a village called Ychoux! It occurred to me that if one did the latter, one might well do the former by mistake.... And the Swan Whisperer said it would go well with Cognac, where we are staying tonight.
As it is Pentecost, I might have found us an English church to join in with, or perhaps we might have headed north via Pau, but it is also our own church's anniversary, and we had a very old friend taking the service, so we decided to watch the YouTube stream instead, which we did before eating.
When we arrived, we filled the WoMo up with water and then had a cup of tea, before heading out to see what was what. We decided that we were early enough to do a tour at a Cognac factory; we thought at first of going to Martell, which is just across the road from the aire, but the visitor centre was up a very steep hill, and anyway, it was nearly their closing time. So we went to Hennessey instead, just along the road.
It was fabulous! The last tour of the day was about to happen, so we joined that. First of all they take you on a short river cruise, mostly to show off the extent of their domain, but also the one remaining mediaeval city gate, and the Chateau (now a museum). The boat dropped you on the other side of the river, where we were shown a short film outlining the history of the company - the 8th generation of the family are still involved! Then we were shown a graphic of how the wine was made - it is a very acid grape to control the proof of the wine, which must be between 9 and 10.5°. This is because any stronger and it would interfere with the distillation process, which we learnt about next. The first and last litres of the distillate are recycled, I didn't quite gather why. The result is eau de vie, which we were allowed to smell, and it smelt gorgeous. This is then put into barrels to mature for a bare minimum of 2 years, and some of the rarest brandies are there for even a century or more! The barrels are kept in cellars known as "chais", not "caves", and there is some ritual involved when a worker places his first row of barrels, and they get their name inscribed on a barrel which has a bunch of flowers left on it and have to bring in cake....
The guide then went into considerable detail about the blending process, and I got a bit lost, but I gather the tasting committee meets every morning at 11:00 am and tastes a good hundred cognacs throughout the day (they do spit it out!) to get the finished product just right. And then we had our own tasting. One was the VS, matured between 2 and 6 years. It was horribly harsh, and would not be my drink of choice! Then we tried the VSOP, matured for a lot longer, which was much nicer on first taste, but still a bit harsh. We then tried it on the rocks, which was lovely, and finally a cocktail known as a Henny-Rita, which was like a margarita only with Cognac. The Swan Whisperer loved it, but I thought it a little too sweet for my taste.
Then, of course, but came the hard sell in the gift shop, but we were immune to such blandishments and came away to eat asparagus, pork chops with pasta and an apple-and-onion mixture, followed by home-made yoghurt with strawberries. The strawberries were a bit tasteless, not a patch on the French Garriguettes, which I'll buy some more of later in the week. Tomorrow is a public holiday, and I don't think most shops will be open.