CognacOK, it's not really wine, but I am going to write about cognac and its origins, after all, it started with the wine and I will tell you how that happened… Cognac is the name of a small port town on the Charente river in France, just north of the city of Bordeaux. The area around this town has become world famous for the production of fine French brandy which has taken the name of the town of Cognac as its own. In the 15th century, English, Dutch and Scandinavian traders came to the Cognac region to buy salt, they so enjoyed the wine from that region that they brought it home with them, alas, they found that the wine often broke down during the journey! The resourceful French merchants worked hard at fixing the problem. To prevent spoilage and save on storage space, they came up with a clever solution: distil the wine, transport it and then add water when serving to reconstitute the product, nine barrels concentrated into one became known as Brandy-wine, the term is derived from the Dutch "brandywijn" and means burnt wine. This brandy-wine was originally crystal clear in appearance until the 17th century when France went to war and the liquid was stored in small oak barrels for several years. Surprise! When those barrels were punched and brandy drawn they found it had taken on color, was much better tasting and much smoother. The producers then started experimenting with different size barrels, different oak provenance and different blends of grapes.In the 18th and 19th centuries, Cognac set out to conquer the world, but it was thanks to the café society in London in the 1700s that Cognac first reached international fame as an after dinner drink or digestive (in France, distilled alcoholic beverages are known as "digestifs", convenient, don't you think?). Therefore, the big trading houses who developed cognac into an internationally recognized liquor were virtually all from the British Isles: Hennessy (Irish), Remy Martin (English), Martell (English), etc... These firms, later, in the age of branding, became the big industrial houses of Cognac. A few notes about the production of that great "elixir": the areas of principal interest are Grande Champagne and Petit Champagne, taking their name from the Campanian chalk soil, which is very much alike the chalky soil of Champagne. The only permissible grape varieties for the making of Cognac are Ugni Blanc, Colombard or Folle Blanche, which amazingly, if used for winemaking, would make for a very crummy wine! The grapes are brought in the and the juice is fermented, it then goes though double distillation, at the end the product is a colorless, very fruity and flowery infant that is then matured in oak barrels. At that time, oxidation occurs and evaporation creates what is called "the angels' share": evaporation is between 1 to 2.5% depending on the "chai" (distillation house). One wonders why all the people in town are not walking around like zombies! In the very end expert cognac makers selectively blend different barrels together to create their particular "house style" of cognac, in fact, some houses like KELT take it a step further: they place the barrels on seafaring ships and take them on around the world trips: back in the 18th and 19th centuries they had noticed that the seas movement, temperature ranges and air pressure changes had many beneficial effects on the cognac, so they perpetuate the custom… I hope this will entice you to punctuate your fabulous meal at Mille Fleurs or Bertrand at Mister A's with a snifter of Cognac! A bientôt
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