Brittany Unofficial Tourist Guide
The legal drinking age in France is 16, but there is essentially no enforcement of this law. You’ll rarely get “carded” or turned away in a café, bar or liquor store. You can buy whiskey along with your daily groceries in supermarkets, local shops, and even gas stations. Therefore children are exposed a lot more to alcohol than their English or American counterparts. Wine is still served with both lunch and dinner in many families, but the meal is no longer considered incomplete without it. As a positive consequence, public drunkenness by rowdy youths is not very prevalent. When people go out to a concert or club, they don’t usually end up drunk as is true in an English, American, or Australian context; they listen to the music or talk.
Drinking at a young age prepares them for the biggest drinking test of all, university. One of the best universities in terms of its nightlife is Rennes. The consequence of being a student city means Rennes has a vibrant nightlife on offer and many Brittany apartments. The main area of the nightlife/bar culture is centered in the older area to the north of the cathedral on two roads, rue St Michel, and rue St Malo. This is not to say that this is the only area, it is just that these two roads and the area between them have the highest concentration of bars. For quieter areas and restaurants there’s the old quartier around the cathedral and also rue St Georges, near the parliament. Students meet in bars and Thursday evenings can be very popular at “rue de la soif” (thirsty street).
The Breton people, in general, have a reputation for being the heaviest drinkers in France, but with now over 25 breweries offering almost 80 different types of beer in a complete range of flavours, who can blame them? Many of these beers are made using sea water or buckwheat. The latter has returned to its rightful place throughout Brittany, and a Finistère distillery has created the first whisky in the world based on this dark grain. The drink is very popular in the region and means that Brittany need no longer hang its head on account of its whiskies. A quality apple brandy has also been developed, known as lambig or goutte. It bears the Fine de Bretagne label and holds its own among many other brandies distilled worldwide.
Success in the cider industry has also encouraged the development of pommeau de Bretagne, a subtle aperitif first developed in the 1970s through the expert blending of the fruitiest cider apples and apple brandy and which was awarded an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée in 1997.
These unique drinks attract cider lovers from all around Europe, but in particular from the UK. With such easy accessibility from Caen many visitors tend to come over to towns such as Rennes, rent themselves Brittany gites for the weekend and pleasure their tastebuds with the local drinks. Rennes council takes a strict view on binge drinking and has in recent years has tried to ensure that visitors can enjoy their lambig or pommeau de Bretange in the right atmosphere and safely head back to their Brittany accommodation for rent.