Product Endorsement

So. last week I was in the big town of Brive-la-Gaillarde and walking around in the ancient part of the city while my wife was getting her hair cut. Brive is about a 40 minute drive from here, in the Correze and I much prefer it to Perigueux. Last year, they redid the infrastructure in the center of the town and tore up the old streets around the Collegiale St. Martin, the 11th century Romanesque church that dominates the center. While they tore up the area, they uncovered the original street level and it became an archaeological site as the ancient streets were exposed and crypts were opened that

Collegiale St. Martin do Brive

dated back to 500 AD. One of my favorite references is the great History of The Franks by Gregory of Tours, a first hand account of the times. He started to write a history of the world and it devolved into a very gossipy and entertaining window into medieval life of the mid 6th century. He hung out in Brive quite a bit. I suppose they had cafes back then as well. I was strolling up the Rue Carnot past a cafe when I stopped because the snazzy window display was a pyramid of 6 packs of bottles of beer...With a rather crude black and white cartoony logo in English. It took a moment to sink in. These were bottles of Duff Beer, the preferred brand of Homer Simpson in Springfield! At first I thought they were props, but, no they were real bottles. I don't drink a lot of beer, but I do enjoy it and I had to find out where it came from. I got home and looked it up on line and found out that the Eschweger Klosterbrau, a monastic brewery in Hessen, Germany had acquired the rights to the logo and were marketing their Duff Brew throughout Europe. It's now being exported to the UK and Australia. So, yesterday, I was in the big supermarket inTerrasson and saw 6 packs of Duff...I bought one. After digging potatoes yesterday afternoon, I opened one up....not bad, not bad at all! A real pilsner as yellow as Homer. A light beer with a herbal fragrance, much better than any industrial concoction that I would have imagined Homer Simpson imbibing in mass quantities. I would imagine that Gregory of Tours would have enjoyed it as well as he strolled the streets of Brive 1400 years ago.