cognac has been recognized as the finest, most complex and interesting brandy in the world for over three hundred years, even though brandy can be—and is—made not only from grapes grown in many places and climates but from a wide range of other fruits, and almost any spirit made from fruit has the potential to achieve great complexity through proper maturation, something that grain spirits achieve only with exceptional care. All of those other fruit spirits, however, follow a trail blazed by cognac, whose producers are inheritors of the longest-standing traditions of any fine spirit makers in the world.
Cognac itself is a relatively small town in western France on the banks of the Charente River. Its fame is due not to its beauty or history but to the grapes grown on slopes on both sides of the river. For the quality of cognac, like that of any other grape-based beverage, depends on its “terroir”—that untranslatable blend of soil, subsoil, and microclimate. In the case of cognac the “terroir” is based on chalky soils, which store water deep and provide vines with few nutrients, making for a lean, acidic, and subtle wine that only blossoms with distillation. As a result, the heart of the cognac vineyard is a small semicircle of vines in the Grande Champagne region, where the slopes are of a particularly deep sort of chalk called Campanian, named after a region north of Rome famous for the depth of its chalky soils full of fossils. The Santonian chalk in the Petite Champagne region that surrounds the Grande Champagne on three sides is less deep and intense (brandies labeled Fine Champagne must include at least half brandies from the Grande Champagne and the rest from the Petite Champagne).
The Fins Bois, the next ring of the circle of land which alone is allowed to produce cognac, is by far the biggest subregion and very varied in quality—historically the brandies produced north of the river Charente at Jarnac east of Cognac and in the east-southeast of the region, known locally as the “Petits Champagnes de Blanzac,” have been highly valued. The terroir of the Bons Bois, the next ring, is much less chalky, while the outer ring, Bois Ordinaires, which reaches west to the coast of the Bay of Biscay, is too sandy to produce worthwhile cognac. Today, apart from vineyards on the offshore islands of l’Ile de Ré and Ile d’Oleron it is, effectively, free of vines. There is one notable exception to the rule that chalk is essential, the Borderies, a little quadrangle of chalky clay to the northwest of Cognac, capable of producing long-lived brandies with overtones of nuts and violets that can be almost too rich on their own.
Cognac’s history and its geography made it an ideal center for a world-famous product. It was situated on a navigable river with direct access to the Bay of Biscay and thus to countries in northern Europe. In the Middle Ages the region had been famous for producing the finest salt, a vital product for preserving meat and fish. Then from the twelfth century, as part of an empire that included Aquitaine as well as England, the Charente region had produced vast quantities of wine for the thirsty British. Moreover during the Middle Ages successive monarchs favored Cognac as a royal town—in contrast with its major competitor, Jarnac, a few miles upriver, which remained a feudal appendage until 1789.
In the sixteenth century the Dutch, then masters of the seas, were looking for brandy as a less bulky alternative to the wine they carried to quench their sailors’ thirst. They soon found that the acidic white wines grown on the slopes above Cognac were ideal for distilling into “brandwijn,” so they brought in their own stills and taught the locals how to use them. In the late seventeenth century London’s thirsty aristocrats hailed the superiority of “Coniack brandy” as part of a general trend to other novel—and superior—drinks like Bordeaux aged in oak and port wine, tastes that survive to this day.
The region flourished in the eighteenth century, a time when many of today’s most famous firms like Martell and Hennessy were founded, often by outsiders. See Martell and Hennessy. Their families survived the revolution and by 1815 had established a duopoly that dominated the cognac business until after 1945. During the nineteenth century, and above all after 1860 when Britain reduced its duties on brandy, sales soared and new legislation allowed firms to establish their own brands. By the 1870s the vineyard growing grapes to make cognac sprawled over an amazing 280,000 hectares (700,000 acres), then the biggest single vineyard region in the world.
By the 1930s the brandy’s qualities had been defined as part of the Appellation d’Origine Controlée regulations depending on their ages rather than where the grapes had been grown. The AOC rules ensured that to be sold as XXX—now called VS—brandies had to have been lodged in wood for a minimum of two years, VSOP for four, and superior qualities like XO at a minimum of six years (an age that rose to ten in 2018). At first, these designations were widely exceeded, with the reputable houses selling their VSOPs, for example, with very high proportions of ten- to twenty-year-old brandies in their blends, but those norms faded rapidly in the 1960s. See vs; vsop; and xo.
After 1945 Cognac, like so much of France, enjoyed three decades of increasing prosperity. Demand everywhere, in Europe, in the United States, and among the Chinese diaspora in the Far East, notably in Hong Kong, soared, and the size of the vineyard doubled, reaching 110,000 hectares (270,000 acres) by 1976.
At the same time Martell and Hennessy were successfully challenged by two competitors. The long-established firm of Courvoisier enjoyed a boom, largely by exploiting its supposed connection with Napoleon Bonaparte. For its part Rémy Martin revolutionized the market. It relied on the previously neglected VSOP level and sold exclusively brands classed as Fine Champagne. See Rémy Martin. The story since 1973 has been a roller coaster. Sensibly, the Cognacais steadily reduced the size of the vineyard by nearly a third to 76,000 hectares (190,000 acres) of the most suitable, mostly chalky, soils—though it is still by far the biggest vineyard in France devoted to a single product, above all one from a single grape variety.
As a result the quality of eaux-de-vie going into virtually all the cognacs on the market has greatly improved. At the same time, reduced demand from the “Big Four” firms—who still account for five-sixths of cognac’s sales—encouraged small distillers, especially in the Grande Champagne, to sell their brandies directly to the public for the first time.
The region survived the 1980s thanks largely to increased demand for the better brandies from Japan, but when the Japanese economy crashed in 1990, it created a crisis that lasted fifteen years. Fortunately, sales above all of the better brandies have soared, thanks largely to the phenomenal rise in the Chinese market—and by the encouragement given to VS as part of hip-hop culture in the United States, whose taste for cognac was born in the country’s ghettos, always the unpublicized center of cognac consumption. Today cognac is drunk throughout the world, although the French prefer scotch whisky and the country now accounts for a mere 2 percent of sales.
Even today the production process would be familiar to the pioneers. The grapes may now be harvested by machine—but they should still not be too ripe, and the wine pressed from them should not be too strong in alcohol, ideally between 9 and 10 degrees, or the resulting brandies will not have the right balance of fruit and acidity. The wines are made without any sulfur and so cannot be kept too long before they are distilled—the legal limit is March 31 the year after the harvest, but the best distillers try to complete the process by the end of February. The wines are distilled twice in small pot stills, the first distillation producing the “brouillis” of about 30 percent alcohol; the second “la bonne chauffe” results in warm grapey, fiery brandies, which legally have to be between 68 and 72 percent alcohol. See double distillation and still, pot.
Two types of oak are used: the Limousin, a wide-grained wood from the local forests, and the tighter-grained wood from the forests of Tronçais oak in central and northern France, which provides a more neutral spirit. The warehouses, the “chais,” generally must be humid and not too draughty or the maturing spirit loses its flavors rather than its strength (although dry warehouses have their uses as well). Luckily for the Cognacais, their original warehouses were built by the Charente to enable the casks to be shipped downriver. New casks provide a strong dose of tannin and vanillin, but even the oldest wood ensures a steady, if minimal, flow of oxygen, which “oxidizes” the brandy and adds mellowness over the years. It then has to be diluted to 40 percent, the level at which most cognacs are sold. See
At the basic level, VS cognac is not designed to be sniffed, sipped, and savored but is an ideal spirit as a base for long drinks. Until well after 1945 “Fine à l’ Eau,” brandy with water, was a French favorite. The Anglo-Saxon equivalent, “B&S,” brandy and soda—or any other sparkling water—remains a very refreshing drink, above all in summer, while cognac combines well with ginger ale to provide a “winter warmer”—a Horse’s Neck. The authorities in cognac have also had some success in promoting drinking brandy with tonic water. See Fine à l’ Eau; ginger ale and ginger beer; and tonic water.
VSOP cognacs have greater depth and concentration than VS and so are ideal for acting as the base for cocktails, as cognac blends happily with a wide variety of other tastes, such as orange or lemon, apple, cream, coffee, and chocolate—which in solid form is a delightful accompaniment to cognac. Cognacs of VSOP level are more complex; their aromas should be absorbed before they are sipped to appreciate their depth and complexity. After a few decades those from the Grande Champagne and the best brandies from the Borderies develop what the locals call “rancio,” with qualities reminiscent of rich fruit cake—nuts, almonds, and dried/candied fruit among its other ingredients—to provide an incomparably long and complex experience. See rancio.
See also brandy; France; and terroir.
Bernard, Gilles. Le Cognac, Une Eau de Vie Prestigieuse. Pessac: Presses Universitaire de Bordeaux, 2008.
Coussie, Jean Vincent. Le Cognac et les Aleas de l’Histoire. Cognac: BNIC, 1996.
Cullen, Louis. The Brandy Trade under the Ancien Regime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Cullen, Louis. The Irish Brandy Houses of Eighteenth-Century France. Stoneybatter, Ireland: Lilliput, 2000.
Delamain, Robert. Histoire du Cognac. Paris: Librairie Stock, 1935.
Faith, Nicholas. Cognac. Oxford: Infinite Ideas, 2014.
Jarrard, Kyle. Cognac: The Seductive Saga of the World’s Most Coveted Spirit. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2005.
Sepulchre, Bruno. Le Livre du Cognac. Paris: Hubschmid & Bouret, 1983.
By: Nicholas Faith