Les Minutes Bleues walks a small group along Dinan’s medieval ramparts as the light goes out of the lanes. A guide carries the route, folding the town’s history into local anecdote. It closes inside the walls at a fine grocery, where regional flavours are tasted and shared. The festival stages each encounter at a listed heritage site of the Côtes d’Armor, in the blue light of dawn or dusk. Walking shoes are asked for.
Tag: food-tastings
Armateurs de Rhum opens its rum workshop
At Saint-Jouan-des-Guérets, outside Saint-Malo, a family distillery opens the room where its liqueurs, gins and rums are made by hand. A guide takes callers along the production line, from the raw material to the bottling. The talk covers traditional methods and what a terroir does to a spirit, and ends with a tasting of the house’s bottlings. The house ages rum at sea, ships some under sail, and distils its gin from buckwheat and Breton seaweed.
Visite de la cidrerie du Penthièvre, Hénansal
Eva and Nathan opened this family cidrerie at Hénansal a year ago, and they now walk visitors through the whole of it. The round begins in the orchards, with the apple varieties and the blending, then moves to the vats and the press that draws the juice. Fermentation does the rest, turning the cider sparkling on its own with no gas added. The bottling line closes the circuit, and a tasting with the two growers ends the visit.
Le Vieux Bourg butter works, Plœuc-L’Hermitage
Butter is the gold of the Breton larder, and at Le Vieux Bourg it is still churned in one farmhouse workshop. Arnaud takes visitors into the production room and, depending on what is being made that day, walks them through the steps that turn milk into refined butter. The round ends at the tasting bench. The flavoured butters carry Breton notes, buckwheat among them, from a farm trade that once topped up the income of the region’s smallholders.
Visite des huîtres Le Cha on the Aber-Wrac’h
Hollow oysters raised in the Baie des Anges, beside the port of the Aber-Wrac’h, are the subject of this visit to the Le Cha oyster yard. The tour sets out how those cupped oysters are brought on, and a tasting follows on site. The farm also keeps a shop for oysters to take away, an oyster bar and a vending machine. It runs within the Economic Tourism and Craftsmanship Weeks, with the takings from the tickets going to the Brittany Heritage Foundation.
Visite de la Cidrerie Benoît at Saint-Alban
The Benoît family has pressed cider at Saint-Alban through four generations, and the cidery opens its press for a fortnight of works visits. Press, fermentation vats and bottling are the stages the guide walks through, in the order the fruit takes. The orchards behind it are organic and certified free of treatment. A cidrology workshop with Benjamin Benoit closes the visit, tasting the juices and ciders made on the spot.
Initiation au breton et pressage à l’ancienne
The Écomusée du Pays d’Auray runs this Morbihan grandeur nature session in the Verger Conservatoire at Saint-Dégan, where some two hundred apple varieties are kept. Participants follow the stages that turn fruit into juice: broyage, pressage, then a dégustation of what they have made. The Breton language arrives with the work, picked up through the gestures, objects and shared moments the pressing calls for. Boots and warm clothing are advised.
Cidrerie Kerloïck : le parcours de la pomme
The Kerloïck cidery at Plestan follows the apple from the orchard to the bowl, a route opened for the Economic Tourism and Craftsmanship Weeks. It begins in the heritage orchard, among the varieties, where the growers explain planting, pruning, mowing and grafting, then continues through the pressing workshop, in operation while the Weeks run, the cellar and the bottling line. A tasting of the house products closes it, for groups of four to twenty-five visitors.
Brieuc workshops: kouign amann and salted caramel
The Yffiniac house of Brieuc opens its production workshops to visitors who book ahead. An hour-long route runs from raw ingredients to the finished tin, passing pâtissiers, carameliers and confituriers at work before the tasting. The recipes belong to the Breton biscuit tradition: gâteaux bretons, kouign amann, palet breton, Confibreizh jams and salted-butter caramel. Children from eight can come along once a small group has booked.
Ferme Perennou Sant-Jakez: a cidre and poiré farm
The farm presses cidre, poiré, apple juice, pear juice and vinegar at Kergleuden, above the Isole valley in Bannalec. Its ground is bocage: old irrigated meadows edged by the apple and pear orchards that fill the presses. Visitors walk that enclosed country and then taste what the fruit became, admission free. A guided turn of the holding can be asked for on arrival. The ciders are raised with no additives, no filtration and no carbonation.