Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, a notorious challenge for El Al flight attendants over the years, still struggles to separate Israelis from their innate Israeli character. Yet, leaving the airport can be a splendid demonstration of this separation.
The journey begins amidst the busy buildings and bustling streets of Paris, gradually giving way to green forests and fields. After five hours on the bus, the urban grayness fades, and the rich greenery of Cognac emerges, offering a breathtaking view unlike any other.
Welcome to the soft green glow of Cognac; the path ahead is clear.
The bus stops at Château de Puyrigaud, the first station on a four-day journey, a historical resting place for King Charles VII. This 14th-century castle has retained its charm over the years, mesmerizing visitors with its classic exterior. Imagine a simple château in Cognac, and you’ll have a good idea of what greets you even from a quick glance at the iron gate leading up the path.
Inside, this travelers' inn is a series of interconnected entrance halls and foyers. Check-in introduces you to the delightful Véronique and Philippe, guiding you past a grand piano, a billiard table, and captivating artworks on the walls, making you ponder aloud about acoustics, wooden floors, steep stairs, and canopy beds.
In the morning, the idyllic rural scene is perfected with a modest pool, a coffee machine waking up to work, and a stunning panorama of boundless, unfenced expanses. Here, you can be as Israeli as you wish. No one will hear you, and it seems no one really cares.
This tour — “a work trip,” I tell everyone. “Go die,” they respond suspiciously quickly — results from a business collaboration bringing Blue Storm Vodka to Israel. Funded by its importers, the trip aims to showcase the vodka’s qualities, teach about its geographical and culinary origins, and provide a cultural framework.
These noble intentions look good on paper but often fall short amid the quiet of Cognac and the profound sense of people living drama-free lives, with orderly, long lunches that seamlessly transition into dinner, and whole days stretching from morning to a 10 PM sunset, untouched by a single news headline.
Shall we drink?
Blue Storm Vodka (40% alcohol, 210 NIS for a 1-liter bottle), classified as super-premium vodka, didn’t actually need the small Israeli market. It has been served for years in private homes and esteemed restaurants across Europe and the US, starring in competitions and tastings. The importers’ imagination was sparked far from here, during a random sip in Las Vegas.
From there, although the owner Gabriel Adzhishvili didn’t know it, it was just a matter of time. Time, persistence, ingenuity, and the kind of Israeli tenacity that seems commonplace and almost disregarded at home but still works wonders abroad.
Thus, even as the drums of war still rumble in the background, this persuasion campaign softened Adzhishvili, and a kosher line was established at the distillery and factory, compelling us to fly there and see it firsthand. A work trip we had no choice but to join, as I mentioned.
The wheat used for Blue Storm comes from northern France and is distilled five times with local water, including a final touch of a charcoal filter designed to remove finer “dirty” molecules. This five-step process, involving meticulous and repetitive refinement, surpasses the standards of most well-known brands.
Combined with a multi-generational family recipe, this produces an exceptionally smooth vodka that embodies joy. It pours well into a glass, and down the throat, leaving behind very little of the usual rough sensations typical of vodka shots. As such, it also blends ideally into taller cocktail glasses.
“I wouldn’t have boarded this train and this journey if I wasn’t convinced it was worth it,” declared veteran mixologist Yotam Shilo, the brand’s ambassador in Israel, at a pre-trip dinner at Pop and Pop Restaurant, where Shilo’s cocktails accompanied the food of Shahaf Shabtai.
He backed these words with a surprisingly pleasant personal version of an espresso martini, followed by a classic dirty martini, then a Passionflower with Campari and Prosecco, and then something I no longer remember, to my regret and delight.
Completing this picture are the bottles themselves — blue and crystalline, prominent and uninterested in spatial blending. Much like the Israeli group that came to see them up close and became, by their very nature, the tourist attraction Cognac didn’t know it needed.
Outside the factory, which also produces the esteemed Meukow Cognac, the village returns to its routine. Narrow roads unfamiliar with Gush Dan’s pedestrian habits, and compact cars, each with an expression of wonder at the mere occurrence. This is what a real Blue Storm looks like, it seems. A blue-and-white storm.
The circle closes. Paris.
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“Cognac is the second sunniest region in France,” explained David Kichka, a food enthusiast through and through, clearly the tour guide everyone should pack in their suitcase. “But that’s only part of what defines it and influences the local table.”
He divides the country into 18 regions and 96 departments, describing a local specialty that sails between the vast vineyards covering nearly every angle and the Atlantic Ocean just a 45-minute leisurely drive away.
This slightly culinary-fusion crossroads produces midday alcohol, excellent caviar, and saffron where just a touch, with salt, makes you soar. It also sustains, of course, a collective passion for ostrich meat, preferably in pâté form, spread on a baguette, generously. And oysters, in plain plastic boxes devoid of any tedious or annoying ceremony, straight from the market. €6.5 per dozen. The calculation is infuriating. The conversion to shekels is even more so.
This French-Israeli circle — vodka and the food that accompanies it, elegant European flair, and joyful Levantine spirit — closes in Paris with a contemporary chanson flavor.
First, at an early tasting dinner at Guefen, the kosher restaurant of Ohad Amzaleg, spiced with tales of real combat in IDF uniforms and symbolic combat in chef’s attire. Then, the next day, a tasting tour that gathered for 90 minutes streets and neighborhoods and districts that would not be enough even for 90 years.
There, between strong cheeses from Provence and Pierre Hermé macarons, between strong coffee under the shade of green trees, fatty-smoked salmon, and a caviar platter that urgently demanded more of that Blue Storm, a local resident stopped us to say something. “Am Yisrael Chai,” he proclaimed, revealing a necklace with the same inscription in Hebrew. Three words, and he felt no need to add anything but tears.