Every year a large number of tourists come to the small city of Cognac, there, perhaps without realizing it, to pay homage to King Francois I. I have enormous respect for Francois, not so much because he was the last French king to attempt (unsuccessfully, it should be noted), to conquer Switzerland, but because of his foresight in encouraging and subsidizing the artists, intellectuals and chefs of the Renaissance. Even more than that, however, I cannot help but feel that the world owes a great debt to Francois for without him there is a good chance that the sublime beverage known as Cognac would not exist.

My most recent homage to Francois started when we drove out of Paris at noon, our plan being to make a leisurely drive to Cognac, enjoying the scenery on the way and perhaps stopping for a light snack en route. So certain were we of the firmness of our plan that we telephoned ahead to our hotel and told them to expect us at seven or eight in the evening. There was no way of knowing, when we left, that this drive, one that can comfortably be completed in six hours, would extend to three days. No one, for example, could have predicted that we would be joined by the ghosts of several well known Frenchmen before we had reached our destination.

Before starting our drive, we could not resist stopping at Brasserie Lipp, there to enjoy a late Hemingwayesque breakfast that started of with two orders each of firm boiled potatoes in delicious olive oil and of cervalas, sausage-like heavy wide frankfurters split in half and covered with mustard sauce. As did Ernest Hemingway in his time (see his "Moveable Feast") we ground plenty of black pepper over the potatoes, dipped our bread in the mustard sauce and downed all of this delicious fare with lots of ice cold draught beer. Our drive went easily but we were surprised, especially after our heavy breakfast, to find that we were already hungry when we entered the city of Orleans.

This is the city where Jean of Arc triumphed over the British in 1429. Joan was burned at the stake just two years later, but many say that her ghost still haunts the streets of Orleans. I had never eaten at the restaurant known as "Les Antiquaires", but the attractive dining room with its old wood beams attracted me and we entered. It did not take long to realize that Michel Pipet who is the owner and chef of this small establishment offers a strictly regional cuisine, one that is inspired by the fine local produce and a tradition for fine dining for which Orleans has always been well known. Without too much hesitation we ordered the quail pate, a chicken consomme that had been enriched with sherry wine, young rabbit in brandy sauce and quenelles made from lobsters and served in a shrimp sauce.

We were enormously pleased by the charming welcome, the good service, the decor and the dishes we received, each of which demonstrated Pipet's exacting knowledge of the sauces and wines of the region. Despite ourselves, however, we found that we could discuss nothing excepts the history and exploits of Joan, the famous Maid of Orleans. To our equal surprise, we found that we were ignoring the forks and knives on the table and were eating with our fingers, much as Joan would have done in her time. We also noted that several members of the staff were looking at us, not impolitely, but with an open sense of curiosity.

While we were closing our meal with a glass of Calvados, we were joined by the chef who, it turns out, is considered somewhat of an expert on the dining habits of Joan. He asked if we were historians. When we told him that we were not, he was more than a bit astonished and informed us that "perhaps only by chance", we had replicated the meal that Joan had eaten more than five hundred years earlier when she dined with the Duke of Orleans. It was our turn to be astonished but, after two more glasses of Calvados we bid at least a temporary farewell to our host (who refused to let us pay the bill) and to the ghost of Joan which seemed to have dictated the order of our lunch. With all of this good food and Calvados now part of our bodies, there was no possibility of driving on so we took a room in a nearby inn, there to refresh ourselves and sleep away the afternoon. We did call our hotel in Cognac and told them that we would arrive only the next morning.

We awoke in early evening, took a long stroll and by nine were hungry enough to consider dinner. Joan's appetite must have been well satisfied at lunch-time, for nothing stopped us from dropping in at "La Cremaillere", a restaurant where Paul Huyart's cooking is typified by modernity and inventiveness. Huyart, an old friend, greeted us warmly and his crayfish fritters, steamed breast of chicken with foie gras and duckling breast with honey vinegar all demonstrated a remarkably light touch. Huyart had recently discovered several magnum sized bottles of Dom Perignon Champagne from the superb vintage of 1947 and insisted on opening a bottle for us. The bill was, as we expected, outrageously high, but frankly the food and wine had been so superb that we judged it to be worth every hard-earned franc we spent.

In the morning we limited ourselves to coffee and a single croissant each, promising firmly to drive directly after breakfast to Cognac. Alas, but the flesh is weak and, by the time we arrived in Tours, 113 miles south of Orleans, we found ourselves hungry. Remembering our experience with Joan, we attempted to waken the ghost of Pope Clement III who had been born in this charming town. Not having a special connection with the underworld (anyone who knows anything about Clement knows that he now resides in hell and not heaven), we failed to make contact, but after a trip to the city library and a bit of research we felt well prepared to lunch in the style to which this outrageous pope had been accustomed.

Unlike Joan, who became a Saint, Clement was anything but a moderate man. During his 14th century reign he had seven wives, sometimes as many as three at a time, and is reported to have made love with more than five thousand women. More a gourmand than a gourmet, Clement was as famous for his appetite at the table as in the bedroom. He often ate as many as 60 oysters at a single sitting. It would have been difficult and frankly unappetizing to start with the ostrich brains that Clement adored, but we made our way to "Barrier", where the marriage of tradition and audacity would surely please any 15th century pope.

Sitting at a window in the large handsome dining room, we were delighted with the view of the flowering courtyard and fountains. Pope Clement was particularly found of lamb's tongue, salmon, squab and duck and all of these, in one form or another were on the menu. The terrine of lamb's tongue with marjoram was a refreshing delight as was the smoked Loire salmon with which we opened our meal. For main courses we had the roast duck in rose wine sauce and the squab with preserved cabbage, both of which had been done to perfection. To accompany our first courses we ordered half a bottle of lightly smoky, pleasantly earthy Pouilly-Fume andwith our main course a bottle of a lightly chilled, young and charming Chinon, one of the best red wines of the Loire Valley. The bill was high but the food had been excellent and we were perfectly content as, we believe was the ghost of Pope Clement.

Only after lunch did I remember our hotel reservations in Cognac. The clerk who received my apologetic phone call told me that I had no reason to worry - our room would be held until we arrived "even, monsieur, if it takes a week or more". We still had good intentions, however, got into our car and promised ourselves that we would complete our journey by nightfall. As Jonathan Swift reminds us, however, "promises and pie-crusts are made to be broken", and by the time we reached Poitiers we were overcome by the need for rest. The peacefulness of the "Hotel France" beckoned to us and we were delighted to find ourselves in a charming room overlooking an interior garden. Before too many minutes had gone by we were asleep, contemplating perhaps in our unconscious that this was the town in which the noted philosopher Voltaire had been born, also "perhaps only by chance", on the abniversary of his birth precisely 305 years earlier. Whether our dreams were influenced by the fact that the house in which Voltaire lived as a child had formerly stood on the site of our small hotel is something we will never know, but when we woke we were (once again) famished and made our way to the small but pleasant hotel dining room where, following the suggestions of Chef Robert Corchet, we feasted on hot sausages, stuffed snails and lamb stew with brown beans. After we had completed our meal, which we washed down with two carafes of the house wine, a soft, fruity red Bourgueil based on Cabernet Franc grapes, the chef joined us. Somehow, after our earlier "meetings" with Joan of Arc and Pope Clement, we were not surprised to learn that both the dishes and the wines on which we had dined were among Voltaire's favorites.

The next day, driving over the old bridge that crosses the Charente river, we finally arrived in Cognac, there finally to pay our homage to King Francois as well as to the exquisite brandies for which the city and the entire region is so well known. We passed the twin circular guard towers watching over the entrance to the old, cobbled quarter of the town and then made our way to the Chateau de Cognac, the castle in which Francois was born. If ever there was a castle that deserved ghosts, this is it, for its history, which includes ownership by some of the best known English and French kings, encompasses an almost unbelievably long list of wars, assassinations and love affairs. Happily, however, the extensive dungeons that once held as many as three thousand very unhappy prisoners, now serve as the cellars for"Otard", one of the most prestigious bottlers of Cognac and today's only prisoners are tens of thousands of casks of aging brandy.

Few chateaux have as long or fascinating a tale. In the 9th century the chateau was merely a rampart like many others in the Western provinces of France built to protect the inhabitants from Norman Invaders. The first real chateau on the site was built in the 10th century the last of the Carolingian Emperors. Towards the end of the 12th century, Richard the Lion Hearted, then King of England, married his natural son Philip to Amelia de Cognac and the town and its castle came under the dominion of the kings of England.

The castle continued to grow and at various times was inhabited by Kings Philippe le Hardi and Philippe the Good, Queen Jeanne of Navarre and two of the greatest warriors of the middle ages, the Black Prince and the Constable of Guesclin. Sadly, everybody wanted to conquer Cognac and, by the end of the 100 years war in the 15th century the castle had been attacked so often that it was little more than a ruin. Fortunately, when Count Jean of the Valois returned to France after a long period of captivity in England, he undertook the construction on the same site of a new princely seat that would be one of the showpieces of his times.

It was at this Chateau on 12 September 1494 that Louise de Savoie gave birth to Francois d'Angouleme, the future king of France who later assumed the title of Francois I. The chateau thrived until the French revolution when it was looted and many of the stones were sold as building materials. In 1795, the chateau was purchased by Baron Jean Antoine O'tart Keith de la Grange, a descendant of one of Scotland's oldest families. Otard, as he preferred to be known, realized that the massive walls of the chateau offered ideal conditions for the slow maturation of fine cognac. Over the seasons and years, the temperature would be steady and that the halls and vaults would never be too dry, never too damp. Thus was born one of the great houses of Cognac.

After we had paid our respects to Francois and sampling some of Otard's Cognacs, we decided that the time had finally come to check into our hotel, the "Logis de Beaulieu" in the village of Saint-Laurent de Cognac, just a few kilometers from the city. Our somewhat late arrival seemed not to have upset anybody and we were given a large room with a fine view of the adjoining park. After a quick shower we returned to our car and drove several more kilometers, to the fishing village of Bourg-Charente, there for a light lunch at Jean Pierre Barre's charming "La Ribaudiere". Sitting on the port, this large white house features captivating regional cuisine, and, because the fishing boats had just come in we could decided on one portion of scallops with cabbage and another of a hot lobster salad made special because the lobsters had been cooked in a court-bouillon that contained tarragon and basil. Nor, frankly, could we resist sharing a dozen perfectly fresh raw oysters served, as they should be, with nothing more than a bit of shallot-vinegar and lemon quarters.

Nearly all of the brandy known as Cognac is made at small farms and most of these are enclosed behind high, green stone walls, invariably behind large closed doors which give them a somewhat forbidding look. Knowing that all it takes is a knock on the door to be invited in to taste the locally made Cognac, however, we spent the remainder of the day driving through villages such as Angouleme, Jarnac, Triac and Saint Meme-les-Carrieres, at each place sipping a bit of this Cognac and a bit of that. Somewhere along the way, (I think it was in Jarnac), I decided that all this Cognac would not make for very safe driving, so we hired a driver to return the car to the hotel and a taxi to take us along the rest of our route. By ten in the evening we had returned to the hotel. Our car was waiting for us. So, thankfully, was our bed.

Dining En Route and in Cognac

Should anyone wish to follow our footsteps from Paris to Cognac, following are capsule notations on each of the places at which we dined and passed a night. Also listed are a few of my other favorites in the Cognac area.

Brasserie Lipp: 151 boulevard Saint-German, Paris 6. One of the most famous and one of the best of Paris' well known brasseries, Lipp was a favorite hangout of such well known characters as Ernest Hemingway, Francois Sagan, Coco Channel, Jean Genet and Henry Miller. The choucroute garni and cassoulet are world famous and the blanquette of veal, boeuf a la mode, and Baltic Herring are equally renowned. Those who love Lipp swear that the beer here is the coldest in the world. A fun place, definitely worth trying. Moderate to expensive prices, depending on what you order.

Les Antiquaires: 222 rue de Bourgogne, Orleans. In addition to the dishes we sampled (see above), consider as well the scallops in white wine sauce, the salmon with fleurette sauce, the rabbit pie, mullard breast with orange peal, veal kidneys in Cassis, all of which are lovingly prepared by chef Michel Pipet. Reasonable prices, especially for lunch.

La Cremaillere: 3 rue Notre-Dame-de-Recouverance, Orleans. An intelligent combination of nouvelle cuisine and regional specialties, try also some of the house specialties here - the vegetable terrine, salad of fresh sardines, and red mullet with mint are especially rewarding. Expensive, but the fixed price menus are surprisingly good value for money. Dinner reservations mandatory.

Barrier: 101 avenue de la Tranchee, Tours. Be sure to request a table by the window and then settle in for at least three hours to enjoy a leisurely meal. Each of the dishes we tried was excellent. Also be sure to consider the fresh salmon with dill vinegar, veal cutlets Florentine, pike mousse with watercress sauce, and the tournedos Rossini (which are among the best you will sample anywhere in France today). Expensive. Dinner reservations required.

France: 28 rue Carnot, Poitiers. Located in the hotel of the same name, this is a restaurant in which the regional cuisine of Poitou is at its best. In addition to any of the dishes that contain the local lamb, consider as well the rabbit with garlic, the salmon with white butter sauce, the duckling with cherries and the veal with sorrel. The hotel itself, with 86 rooms, is most agreeable, but be sure to ask fo a room with a window that faces the gardens. Hotel and restaurant both reasonably priced. Reservations recommended.

La Ribaudiere: in the port at Bourg-Charente. Jean Pierre Barre and his wife Marie hold court in this beautiful white house where the service is friendly, the regional cuisine is captivating, and the list of Cognacs offered is among the most extensive in the world. Reasonably priced. Reservations recommended.

La Chamade: 13 rampe d'Aguesseau, in the village of AngoulemeChef owner Bernard Lambert, who worked with the famous Troisgros, loves to show off his considerable talents at his pleasant restaurant. Try especially the salad of foie gras with melon, the sea perch braised with leeks, the turkey with orange and grapefruit sauce and do not miss the fine homemade desserts offered. Reasonably priced, especially for lunch. Reservations recommended.

Le Moulin de Maine-Brun: in the village of Asnieres sur Nouere. Set in a charming old mill near the forest of Bracoune, this fine little restaurant specializes in traditional dishes. Michel Menager's mussel soup, pate de foie gras, stuffed goose breast and turkey in raspberry sauce are all worth trying. Consider as well spending a night in the charming inn of the same name that adjoins the restaurant. Reasonably priced. Reservations recommended.

Logis de Beaulieu: in the village of Saint-Laurent de Cognac, 6km. from Cognac via route N141. This fine inn, with 21 large, comfortable rooms, sits in the middle of a calm 15 acre park and has a superb view of the vineyards. The hotel organizes visits to local wine cellars and boat excursions on the Charente. Good, wholesome meals are served and the hotel boasts an wine cellar. Reasonably priced.

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© Daniel Rogov