Armagnac!

Nigel has written to members with details of the next visit.

 Condom (Gers), Friday 26 July 2024 ​  

Our third 2024 event will be a morning visit to Maison Aurian, 5 avenue de la Gare, 32100 Condom (no fee), followed by lunch some 10 km away in La Romieu, designated one of the ‘plus beaux villages de France’.Armagnac has been produced in Gascony for more than 600 years. It is the result of distilling a variety of white wines made from grape varietals that include Ugni Blanc, Colombard, Folle Blanche, Saint-Emilion, and Baco Blanc. Maison Aurian, founded in 1880, is still run by the same family. The tour will include a guided visit to the chais where, away from curious eyes, are aligned the glass demijohns containing examples of each year’s production, and which you will be allowed to sniff. This unusual experience will be followed by a tasting of the house’s armagnacs and other liqueurs.Lunch will be at the Étape d’Angeline in the small main square of La Romieu, a village much visited by pilgrims making their way from Le Puy and Rocamadour to Santiago de Compostela and one whose name recalls the local 11th-c. term for a pilgrim returning from a visit to Rome. Possible afternoon attractions include the UNESCO-listed Collégiale, right by the restaurant and built in just seven years (1312–1318) as private chapel and family pantheon by Cardinal Arnaud d’Aux de Lescout (La Romieu c.1260–1321 Avignon), a relative of the future Avignon pope Bertrand de Got (Clement V) and which remained in family hands until the Revolution, and the six-hectare Jardins de Coursiana, with their splendid English-style garden, arboretum, herbarium, vegetable garden, and tea rooms.