Write to James Leavey

Clarence Fountain and the Blind Boys of Alabama have been singing God's music for over 60 years, during which they've travelled the long winding road to success, from performing in small tent shows to picking up three Grammy Award nominations. Along the way they've changed and added members, but they've never lost faith. That sense of survival is reflected in the title of their latest album, ‘Holdin’ On’.

That’s a good description of what they were doing when I first saw them. It was the end of their first appearance at the annual ‘Cognac Blues Passions’ festival in France, and each of the five visually-impaired gospel singers placed his right hand on the right shoulder of the man in front of him, when they were led off the temporarily-erected stage that formed the musical hub of the festival by the group’s only fully-sighted singer.

It was at that moment a terrible thought came into my head. Supposing all six singers were visually-impaired, and the leader had his hand on the shoulder of a French roadie who had spent all day following in my wake, i.e. sipping his way through several bottles and ageing barrels of Remy Martin’s finest Cognac. The Blind Boys would probably spend the rest of the night crocodiling their way around the small French town, in search of their beds

Actually, in the early hours of the morning I had trouble finding my hotel – Le Domaine du Breuil, a 19th century chateau on the outskirts of Cognac, well way from the live Blues that was belting out of every bar in the town centre. But that was more to do with sampling too much of the town’s world famous spirit the day before, than my contact-lensed, red-rimmed eyes.

The day before, I had rolled up at the Blues festival courtesy of Remy Martin, who had sponsored this annual event and were keen to show me round their world famous cellars.

I’d agreed to the trip, provided my room contained a large ashtray for my premium Cuban stogies. The great thing about a fine cigar is that with one, you’re never truly alone. It’s the most faithful companion I know: a comforter on a bad day, a reliable friend that never answers back and, not least, a guaranteed source of warmth and pleasure. Whenever I’m in foreign climes without a cigar in my hand, I feel naked and alone.

It’s also useful for finding your way round small French towns in the early hours of the morning after a day and a night of sponsored reverie. Over a few Remy cocktails, the barman confided that the whole area was honeycombed with ancient tunnels, one of them apparently leading from the chateau of an infamous and long dead member of the Remy Martin family to the local nunnery and monastery.

Perhaps he was simply dropping off samples of Remy Martin Louis VIII – known among connoisseurs as the ‘king of cognacs, the cognac of kings’. If you have ever tasted 100 year old Remy Martin straight out of the cask, you’d probably agree with them.

Getting back to the Blues, there’s something about this music – the cornerstone on which jazz was built in the 20th century - that lends itself to the quiet enjoyment of a fine cigar. Indeed, most Blues clubs I have been to are usually so smoker-friendly, you can hardly see the musicians on the stage through the fog of exhaled tobacco smoke.

Which is why the first thing I looked for was a cigar shop. It wasn’t difficult. Cognac is a small town, and there’s just the one proper tobacco emporium, and a good little one at that.

“Right ho,” I reflected, after filling my traveling humidor and cigar case with a splendid selection of fine Cuban and Dominican ‘sticks’ of tobacco at ridiculously cheap prices, “Bring it all on.”

“It” was two days of sampling the finest food and booze that Cognac can offer. My evenings were spent checking out the town’s bars and, not least, lolling around the town’s main park, whose temporary stage and auditorium had, over the nine years the festival has been running, enticed several world famous Blues’ musicians and singers, such as Ray Charles and B.B. King.

This year, it was the turn of Ike Turner (who turned up to play ‘Tequila’), Jimmie Vaughan, Bobby Rush, and the afore-mentioned Blind Boys of Alabama.

So, there I was in Cognac’s main park, dotted around which was a splendid exhibition of floodlit, kinetic, French modern sculpture, most of it themed around the subject of booze and blues. My problem was, having sipped several cognacs too many by the late night arrival of the main headline event, some of those sculptures looked remarkably like ashtrays, and I had to restrain myself from using them for unloading the ash from my Havanas.

Eventually, a thoughtful press officer found me a spare ashtray and I reclined on the grass on that summer night in France, my double corona resembling a large chimney pointing at the constellations in the sky above me, while I breathed in the atmosphere created by all that lively music, exhaled cognac fumes, and bonhomie.

“Well, well, well,” I said to my faithful companion, which added, it seemed to me, a certain frisson to the fairy lights strung out on the park’s trees, “we do get around, don’t we.”

If you like ‘getting around’, and want to enjoy some of the world’s finest food, booze and music, you could do a lot worse than joining the growing number of music fans who come to the small town of Cognac perhaps, without realizing it, to pay homage to King Francois I, who was born there.

Francois was the last French king to attempt (unsuccessfully), to conquer Switzerland, and also had the foresight to encourage and subsidise the artists, intellectuals and chefs of the Renaissance. The world owes an even great debt to Francois, for without him, there is a good chance that the sublime beverage known as Cognac would not exist.

Cognac, as we all know, is not just the best known place in France, after Paris – it is also a product. Nearly all of the brandy known as Cognac is made at small farms and most of these are enclosed behind high, green stone walls and grey, sun-bleached wooden doors. Fortunately, all it takes is one knock on the door and most farmers will drag you in, pour Cognac down your neck, and try, in the nicest way, to sell you a bottle or two of their private reserves.

I spent a very pleasant morning at Jacques Painturaud’s farm, where not only can you sample his family’s fine cognac, but sleep it off afterwards at his B ‘n’ B (but book early).

Blues and cognac seemed, at first glance, to be unlikely bedfellows. Until I discovered that several 17th century African monarchs developed a taste for brandy/cognac to the extent they were prepared to trade slaves for it. Many of those African slaves were shipped to the American colonies and, over the centuries, their work songs gradually evolved into the music we now know as the Blues.

So it made sense that about 45,000 Blues fans took over the town of Cognac for the four days of the Blues festival, including those strange anoraks a.k.a. the Blues Music Press, all attending a internationally-renowned annual event that is rapidly growing beyond the resources of this charming, unspoilt, French town.

Cognac may have had problems accommodating all of its music-loving visitors, but Remy Martin unwittingly managed to resolve them, in part, by handing out free samples or ‘sips’ of Remy Martin VSOP. What do you need a bed for when you can fall asleep on a table in every café in the town centre, including a great one called, appropriately, Café Cognac.

World famous for its eau-de-vie, Cognac is also known for it narrow winding streets and unspoilt ancient buildings, many of them devoted to one of the finest spirits ever poured into a glass.

Indeed, the town’s stonework (and certainly most of its cellars) is often covered with black velvet, the work of a microscopic fungus that feeds on alcohol vapours.

The world's best-known brandy comes from the peaceful countryside surrounding the Charente river one hundred miles north of Bordeaux. This slow moving river, which King François I called the loveliest river in his kingdom, passes through a placid landscape of vineyards bathed by a clear and radiant light. A twenty-mile area called the 'golden circle" of cognac production encompasses Cognac and the second distilling town of Jarnac.

One of the best things to do in Cognac is to take a ‘train ride’ round Remy Martin’s vineyards, and cellars. There’s usually the equivalent of one and a half barrels of fine cognac in the air – known as ‘the Angel’s Share’ - in Remy’s cellars, so do take a couple of deep breaths as you enter them.

While waiting on the plane about to take off from Bordeaux airport’s runway on a hot summer day, the ‘Angel’s Share’ exuding from myself and several other music lovers after a long weekend of Blues and booze was enough to keep all the infants on the plane subdued for the rest of the trip.

The future of Cognac the town currently depends on cognac the drink – an unsold lake of which can be found in the local cellars. There’s talk about ‘holding on’ to the best that both can offer, while encouraging the local farmers to use part of their land for growing grapes that can be turned into fine wine.

They may have been singing the Blues in Cognac, but I hope neither the town or the drink ever really experiences them. May they, like the Blind Boys of Alabama, keep the faith.