Cointreau Museum

Yesterday, a few people and I went to the Cointreau museum in St. Barthélemy, just outside of Angers. What's Cointreau? According to wikipedia, "Cointreau (pronounced [kwan'-tro]) is a brand of triple sec liqueur, and is produced in Saint-Barthélemy-d'Anjou, a suburb of Angers, France. Cointreau sources its bitter oranges from all over the world, usually Spain, Brazil and Saint-Raphaël, Haiti." Okay, now that we're all educated and stuff...

This was the second time we tried to go to the museum; the first time, we went out there only to find that we needed a reservation in order to do anything. Logically, we made our reservations and came back this weekend.

Here's Diana, Alex and Brian holding up the Cointreau logo, that looks an awful lot like it should be for paper towels

The tour itself was pretty interesting...we walked through the production factory and then above the bottling part. I liked it, but I'd imagine it was cooler for someone who hasn't already taken a tour of a butter company :) and a chocolate factory.

Here's me and Alex in front of the giant Cointreau vats

After the tour, we got to participate in a "degustation" or in simple terms, a tasting. It was really cool, we all sat around at tables like we would in some classy bar, while a bartender explained a whole bunch of stuff to us in French. First he had us try it straight. PHEWWWWW it had a bite to it. But once you get past that, it's sweet and orange-y. And then he told us to put an ice cube in our glass. I thought to myself, "Okay, I don't see what the big deal is, it'll probably be the same thing only cold...

But no! It changed colors!!! Well, not exactly, but it got kind of cloudy, and tasted different. It was sweeter and less like..alcohol-y. Afterwards we learned how to make Cointreaupolitans, which consist of Cointreau, cranberry juice, and lime juice, put in a tumbler and shaken with ice.

Here's Jen making her Cointreaupolitan

Here's what a finished one looks like

Diana and Jen with their cocktails, looking awesome cuz my camera rocks

Alex, Diana, Jen, Brian and me

So over all it was a pretty good time. Today I have to write a paper and study for my DFA (business French) exam, and decide if I'm going to chance bringing wine home in my luggage or not...I got 2 bottles as Christmas presents, but seeing as I'm not 21, I'm kind of taking a risk by trying to bring them back. Not a huge risk, mind you; if they have a problem with it they'll just confiscate the wine, which means I'll have wasted about 30 dollars. Otherwise, I have to ship them to the US, which would cost about three times as much. But either way, these are Christmas presents for people (who are all over 21!), and I don't want that to get messed up...I'm just going to have to pray that this goes well, because I can't really afford to ship it back. I don't know. I'll call home today and see what they think.