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This page is based on information contributed by Thierry Depaulis.

Aluette (or la Vache, "The Cow Game") is played in Vendée and the coasts of Brittany, using a 48 card Spanish suited pack with special designs. Aluette is a very peculiar trick-taking game where suits are irrelevant. Partners use mimics to signal their hands. The mechanism is similar to that of early games like Truc / Trut and Put. The use of Spanish suited cards is surprising, but there is a theory that these suits were originally used throughout France and were displaced in most of the country by French suits when those were invented. Aluette may be an extremely old game: some late 15th-century records from the South-West of France mention a card game called Luettes. However, Nantes clearly appears as the modern cradle of the game: until c. 1700 there was in Nantes a large group of Spanish merchants, and Spanish suited cards made in Thiers (Auvergne) were conveyed on the Loire river up to Nantes where they were shipped to Bilbao and Navarra. The hypothesis of a late introduction (17th century?) through Spanish merchants in Nantes is not unlikely.

Rules in English will be given here eventually. Meanwhile here is a link to an Aluette page in French, with illustrations of some of the cards.