Nogaro, the town just down the road, is said to have the oldest Armagnac distillery in the region. It was a newer, more modern, distillery in the town, that had an open day today, so,  with hundreds of others, we went along. We had a tour of the huge stainless steel containers that each house many thousands of litres of grape juice, to ferment into wine, followed by a tour of the building where the barrels of the finished product are kept. There were thousands of barrels of armagnac; the oldest one I saw dated back to 1966!. Proudly displayed in another building were the copper stills, where the wine is distilled, before being put into the oak barrels that give it its colour. We saw the bottling plant and learnt the names of the twenty or so differently shaped bottles and it was here that everyone present was given a miniature bottle of armagnac to take home.

At 12.30, the MD of the company and the maire of Nogaro did the “mise en perce du tonneau” – they hammered a tap into a barrel of armagnac. As they did so, a great plume of armagnac spouted from the barrel onto the ground below, causing people to comment on the waste; so it was to everyone’s great amusement when it turned out that one of the official photographers had missed the shot;and  they had to put the bung back into the barrel, then go through the process a second time.

Once that was done, there were stands providing tastings of local wines, floc (a local aperitif – a mix of grape juice and armagnac) and, of course, armagnac. The air was heavy with alcohol, outside as well as in; I think you could probably have got quite merry just by breathing!

Later on, Nick and Kieran went climbing with the Nogaro club. They meet at the local indoor climbing wall on Wednesday evenings, but have occasional weekend outings to real rocks. They arrived home tired and hungry.