According to Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Companion to Wine, Floc de Gascogne is the Armagnac region’s answer to Pineau des Charentes (the vin de liqueur of the Cognac region)—which, readers may recall, I embraced as the unhip new sip of this minivan-driving suburbanite who has officially lost her grip on cool.

Mouclade is a wonderful French dish of mussels in a creamy, saffron- curry sauce that is both rich and delicate. One of the key ingredients is Pineau des Charentes, the French aperitif we discussed in our last post.

I live in the burbs. I drive a mini van. My grip on “cool” has officially loosened. So it’s only appropriate that I should embrace Pineau des Charentes, a fortified wine that, by some accounts, is not the hippest drink on the Paris nightclub circuit.