It is a blessed country where you can enjoy sausages with fresh, fattened oysters washed down with local white wine. Oysters from Marennes, Tramblade or Bourcefranc are a well known feast for refined tastes.

It's also quite a country for those who enjoy experimenting and trying the local specialities such as snails, "chaudrée" (local fresh fish cooked in muscatel wine), "mongettes", as well as "gratons"(cooked goose fat) and "tantouillée" which the devoted food lovers call "gigouri"(pork offal, chicken and red wine stew). It is also the country of great liquor where the Sainte vineyards cross the Cognac country. The marvelous Charente table is full of savoury surprises from dishes based on family traditions. Make the most of the never-ending riches from the sea and the coast.

The snail is as important to the people of Charente as the French cock is to the French nation; an emblem and a dish. Called "Cagouille" in the local language of Saintonge. Excellent seafood cooking, turbot, bass, hake, Saint-Pierre, monkfish, sea bream, mullet, mackerel, herring ... mussels, oysters and sardines, Charente cooking uses unique methods to obtain the best from seafood. Many local recipes have travelled around the world.

Above the alignment of grape vines and the undulating rows of green or golden leaves, a poetry of flavours and perfumes floats over the vineyard.

The Welsh and the Romans discovered salt, an inexhaustible treasure on the coast of Saintonge. The workers in the marshes were soon looking for the refreshment of a glass of wine. Likewise, the tradesmen and the civil servants, who have grown rich from the salt, required the best wines for their tables. The country was soon covered with vines. There was no abbey, no castle and not even a bourgeois house which didn't have a vineyard. At the beginning of the XVII century, poverty set in, but with it came ingenuity. All the wine that was not sold was burnt. This strong flavoured alcohol became a coveted exchange item with sailors from Holland, Great Britain and other places. The Dutch called it "brandewijn", burnt wine.

The English changed this word to "brandy". The name "Cognac" was heard for the first time in 1725.