Above: Various craft spirits displayed at Distillerie Louis Roque in Souillac, France

About 10 minutes from the Château de la Treyne, on a rather unpromising street in Souillac, the Distillerie Louis Roque still produces its spirits largely by hand, going so far as to manually apply labels and sealing wax. One of the English-speaking employees, Jessica, led us on a tour of the facility, including through the barrel-aging room and the distilling room, where the copper stills looked as if they might have been borrowed from the adjacent museum. It was fascinating to learn, for example, that the distillery uses only the fruit in its walnut liqueurs, harvested in late June, as opposed to the walnut itself, which develops in autumn.

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