While we were in Bordeaux we realized the hotel’s minibar did not stock Glenfiddich, Laphroaig, Oban, Talisker or even Glenlivet and that if we wanted a serious pre-dinner libation, we would just have to stock our own. “Ecosse malt pur” is about as close as the French come to having the phrase “single malt Scotch” and fortunately it’s available, one just has to find a purveyor with some imagination. This is not to say the French have given up their traditional aperitfs in favor of something stronger, it’s just their way of acknowledging there are some folks whose alcoholic beverage preferences they can’t fathom. I tried to communicate my desire to purchase a modest supply to the hotel’s concierge, but without much success. I tried my pal Siri, whose ability to parse complex sentences is limited enough that her efforts are frequently a source of amusement – again without any useable results. (Though her rejoinders to my exclamations of “struck out again” and “no joy” could provide a good Jungian psychiatrist or comedian with a sense of humor with hours of interesting material.) Siri did offer the address of a shop not far away offering wines and spirits for retail purchase.

Milady and I set off in a direction which seemed counter-intuitive – away from the docks and the river – arriving at a circular “magasin” a few blocks from our hotel. I am a somewhat slow learner, but even I have come to understand that many, many different stores can peacefully co-exist in a single physical building. In American those places are designated “malls” – and no one has bothered to explain to the Académie Française between their traditional “magasin” (a shop with a single offering and single proprietor) and an American shopping mall (a whole bunch of shops, many with multiple offerings and almost all with corporate owners). The mall was fun to look around, but we were searching for scotch – and coming up dry. We became mildly disoriented (circular malls have that effect on my DPS (Dragon Positioning System) even when I haven’t been imbibing) and exited “le grand magasin” by a different door. Smelling the river (an old draconian navigation technique) we headed towards it, thinking to find our way from a known location back to the hotel. As we walked, a shop with the attention catching name of Cognac Only was suddenly directly in our path. While single malt scotch is the epitome of pre-prandial indulgence, cognac is the bookend to it. Naturally we instantaneously suspended our plans to return to the hotel in favor of an immediate and complete investigation. We entered the shop and were immediately under its influence.

Dozens of cognacs lined the walls. From the really big brand names with hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of hectares under cultivation, to itsy bitsy tiny producers with less than 20 hectares; from fancy presentations in Lalique crystal decanters to what might have been repurposed water bottles; and from a few Euros to uncontemplatible sums, cognacs (and their cousins, pineaus des charantes) awaited our attention. The proprietor is a young, charming gentleman named Pablo who is as enthusiastic about cognac as we are, but infinitely more knowledgeable. (You can see photos of both the exterior and part of the interior on my Facebook page in the album “France – Food and Foolishness” if you have troubling visualizing. I suppose I could also suggest www.cognaconly.com, but that would be cheating.) We understood (subject to some misinterpretation owing to a lack of fluency in my French) his family loved cognac and had harbored a longtime desire to open a shop dedicated solely to offering the best of the best, and now they have two, the one in Bordeaux and the original in La Rochelle.

We discussed our preferred characteristics including floral/herbal preferences, smoothness, sweetness/dryness, and price. Pablo offered several smaller producers including Aubrey, Gourmel, and Beaulon that would meet our criteria and be substantially less expensive for the same qualities than their better known counterparts. We selected a small (375 ml) bottle of Aubrey XO, tucked it in our net bag and forgot all about locating a bottle of single malt for a pre-dinner sip. Until you’ve tasted a truly fine cognac, there are no words adequate to convey the experience. Flowers, honey, freshly mowed grass and an unmistakable je ne sais quoi pour from a very ordinary looking bottle and into your glass creating a most extraordinary experience.

Naturally we went back the next morning. I was half expecting the shop to have vanished overnight, a la Brigadoon, leaving us desolate and yearning for just one more taste. Instead, it was just where we’d left it and the credit card slip the human male signed after Milady chose bottles to send back to the cave, provides cold hard evidence of its real existence.