First off we went to Villette de Vienne, a village to the North East of Vienne where Joannes Colombier, a licensed private distiller, was the first in France to distill a small amount of brandy from Williams pears growing in his orchard.
A restaurateur in Vienne went into raptures over this fruity liquor and took the entire production from 1930 onwards. It grew from there and became available in specialised outlets from the 1960's. The operation was continued and grown by Joannes' daughter Ann-Marie Colombier and her husband Renaud, until they sold the operation 2006. L'Eau-de-vie de Poire stems from them.
I stopped and asked a lady in Villette de Vienne for directions to the distillery and lo and behold the lady was Ann Marie Colombier who still lives in the village. She offered to take us to the distillery and show us around and tell us about the process and invited us to have tastings and meet the new owners, and we could not have been more welcomed. The owners and staff were flat out processing this year's harvest, which was picked 2 weeks ago and allowed to ripen in big crates in a barn, before it went off. We were escorted around by the gracious former patrone and we saw the process which is still done the way it was back in Joannes' time, with a bit of heavy lifting devices added. We were taken to the tasting room where we tried some of the produce and made some purchases.
This is the place where they grow pears in bottles on the tree. The "pear in the bottle" filled with liquor is sold as special liqueur. I don't know how you get the full sized pear out of the bottle.
This visit was a special experience.
Ripened pears ready for processing
Fully grown pears in bottles
Pears in bottles in a tree (from a picture on the wall)
Ann-Marie and Ann in tasting room
This evening presented another special experience. Our neighbours Jean and Josette invited us to their place for aperitifs along with other neighbours Cedric and Floriane who both are school teachers and speak English. Jean and Josette who do not speak one word of English have both lived in the village all of their lives.
We thought aperitifs meant pre-dinner drinks, but as the french eat their main meal in the
middle of the day and just sit around at night and eat nibbles, like sauccison,
cheese and bread etc, followed by fruit tarts etc, we were there till 10.30
having our meal. Both sets of neighbours make their own wines and liquors out of
amazing things, Ann's favourite being the peach wine, made out of peach leaves which she will
definitely be getting the recipe for. We were also introduced to the wines from the Saint - Joseph vineyards, again from the Côte du Rhône region, but more about them later.
This was a most enjoyable night and we learnt a lot about our village.
Our neighbours sharing aperitifs
Great day
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