We had a later start this morning - 8:30 and drove to the small town of St. Emillion. It’s a town like many others, steep, narrow, cobblestone streets; although, this one might be different than some due to the high concentration of wine stores. The church is also ancient and was originally built into the cliff wall, the later church was built on top of that. The church was also a good example of the symbolic beheading that occurred in the Revolution as all the people engraved over the doorway had their heads taken away.
We stopped at a rest stop and had a decent meal; I had a slice of quiche lorraine. We then drove to Cognac and toured the Chateau Otard. There are no living decendents of the Otard family, so the business was sold to Bacardi in the early 1990’s. The first part of the tour was about the history of the area and Frances I. The most interesting thing we learned about Frances I is that he had a married mistress whose husband wasn’t happy about the affair so he intentionally contracted syphillis, gave it to his wife, who gave it to Frances I. The husband died of syphillis 3 days before Frances I did.
Cognac is quite a process, 2 distillations, aged in casks in a dry cellar and then in a humid cellar and then put into casks that are hermetically sealed and stop the aging process. I need to mention that 3 - 5% of cognac evaporates into the air and the entire time we were in the Chateau, the smell of cognac was in the air, it’s called the angels share. It got stronger when we entered the rooms with the casks. The buildings are black both inside and out because of the evaporation of the cognac into the air. We got tastes of VS and Napoleon, the Napoleon being the midrange version - that one was the best.
Tonight we are staying outside of Tours. We have had beautiful warm weather (I'm guessing mid '70s), we continue to feel blessed.
Just now, Kate and Erin, two young gals from Australia asked me if they can join me on my side tour to Giverny, I said absolutely. I'm also going to be joining them and Kylie to see a show at the Moulin Rouge on Wednesday night. We were talking to Brian to get him to try to arrange it for us and they let him know that they won't be doing the Versailles trip. He gave them a guilt trip that he'll have to cancel the Versailles trip. I told him that's not fair to put that on them. Kate's fine with it, but now Erin feels guilty, which is of course what he was going for. Kate told him, "We're having to make an effort to see the things that we want to see, I guess that they'll have to make a special effort as well if they truly want to see it." Good for her.
After dinner, Howard got Jack to talk about his experiences as a member of the Dutch Resistance in WWII, so 9 of us gathered around him in the lobby for 2 hours to listen. Very interesting and exciting. Some of his experiences you would not believe if it was in a movie. It is now after 10:30
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