Roadtrip: Congac, Bordeaux and world heritage

Parents and their adopted kid

Congac is a small town in France, but for most people understand the word, is a kind of wine, or in Mandarin, we called 干邑. Actually after I looked up wikipedia, congac belongs to Brandy 白蘭地. According to French Law, to bear the name Cognac, the production methods for the distilled brandy must meet defined legal requirements, ensuring strict conformity with a 300-year old production process.

As in Bordeaux, winery was one of must-go tour spot for us. We drove 1.5 hours long, finally achieve Congac at about 4pm (had a fast lunch in a local restaurant), just in time for the Hennessy tour.

What is Hennessy, if I told you that 軒尼士 or the brand VSOP, you might have something in mind. But actually the company is waaaaaay bigger than I expect.

Jas Hennessy & Co., or more simply Hennessy, is a prominent French cognac house and co-leader of the luxury goods company, LVMH. Hennessy specializes in the manufacture of cognac. Today, the company of Jas Hennessy & Co. sells about 50 million bottles a year worldwide, or more than 40 percent of the world’s Cognac.

The tour started at 4pm, and we had a retarded “river tour” on the first hand. (The river tour was taking the boat on a small canal, went 200 m back and forth, in order to arrive the cross side. Totally waste of gasoline and time also.)

After that, a lady guided us to the wine museum to see how they produce congac or XO, it took a long time to wait the grapes to grow and the quality of the wine depends heavily on the weather and other natural factors very much.

The most important of all, in order to produce the same quality of wine every year to serve the majority, they had to deploy wine produced in different year to make the same thing. For example, the wine every year had its “characteristic” so if we’d like to produce the wine in the same taste, we must find out which year allocate with whom will be the best.

Nischint was very serious.

I had a headache after the serious hammer and even I smelled the wine, I’d feel like to puke. So after I went to the world-class warehouse, I felt dizzy. But I think it is still a good place to visit since the oldest wine of the warehouse was made in 1800s.

The most expensive wine was the allocation of 7 wines by 7 tester of 7 generations.

Wine taste was also included in the tour, for some of us, it is the most important part. We tasted 2 kinds of wine including a congac and VSOP. Deniz, Pascal and I had try their grape juice, personally, I think the juice fits me the most.

After the tour, we went back to Bordeaux for sightseeing its world heritages. I felt that Bordeaux was is a lucky city since after so many wars in France, it still preserve so many world heritage in town.

So in my opinion, Bordeaux will be my favorite city in France right now. Not only the historical buildings but the residents are so energetic and THERE WERE SO MANY PRETTY GIRLS.

She’s a bartender.