Cognac

Hennessy Cognac
Originally uploaded by radix999

We arrived in Angouleme yesterday and wandered around the city a bit the first night. We came here with the intention of taking a day trip to Cognac and doing a visit to one of the distilleries and seeing the Angouleme comics museum (which is what Angouleme is well known for)

We couldn't find any guided tours at the hotel, or any information about Cognac - so armed with very little knowledge we simply caught the train to this town and figured we'd walk around and see what we could find.
It took about 40 minutes to get there from Angouleme - and with our Eurail pass we didn't have to worry about tickets at all.
We had fun finding the city centre initially, but once we did we were able to find the Centre de Tourism and she their was an English tour of the Hennessy Distillery due to start in about 15 minutes.

The tour started off with a very brief boat ride - as the main Hennessy buildings were on the other side of the river. Our guide then showed us through the whole grape growing, distilling, cooperage, and aging process.
Fascinating to think that some of the barrels there have been aging for over two hundred years and still haven't aged enough according to the guys in charge - you can see the barrels in a couple of shots there from 1800.
After the tour we were given a chance to taste the different types of Cognac - and Yumi and I got to try all three types on offer:

VS - Very Special - is the youngest of them all, 3-4 years old and suitable for long drinks, cocktails and mixes.
Fine de Cognac - similar to VSOP in age (5-6 years), but a little sweeter and smoother - quite popular among the ladies apparently.
XO - Extra Old - aged more than 10 years - is the oldest and richest of the lot - sweeter and stronger, but also somewhat smoother.

We enjoyed the tastings, but I think both of us decided that Cognac wasn't really our thing - still nice to try though!
After that we wandered around the city of Cognac a bit more - checked out the markets and shops and had a nice lunch before catching the train back to Angouleme.

Tomorrow we're going to spend wandering around Angouleme a bit more, and then we head further south to Patrick's place in Bagneres-de-Biggore (about 30 minutes from Lourdes).