Cognac
Each year, 20 million bottles—about 12%—of all Cognac produced just vanishes into thin air.
In Cognac, France, they call it “the angels’ share” because it is the unavoidable evaporation of a distilled spirit as it ages in wood. (Not to worry: two-thirds stays wet and adds to the more than one billion bottles of Cognac in stocks.)
Cognac—the world’s best-known brandy—comes from an area around the town of the same name, close to Atlantic Ocean about 70 miles north of Bordeaux. Hereabouts grow nearly 200,000 acres of grapes (mostly a variety called Ugni Blanc) that make the wine that distillers then make into Cognac.
The map of the area of Cognac is like a bull’s-eye, with the best wines (and the spirit made from them) coming from the center land. Cognac made from here calls itself Grande Champagne—which has nothing to do with the famed sparkling wine produced on the other side of France, and everything to do with the Latin word campus, or “field.”
The next ring out is Petite Champagne, then Borderies (an area bordering Cognac town). Three additional areas, radiating further still, encircle the “fields” and are the Bois [bwah], the French word for “woods” or “forests”—Fins Bois, Bons Bois and Bois Ordinaires. The fine, the good and the run of the mill.
(If you see a Cognac labeled “Fine Champagne” [feen shahm-PAH-nyuh], it is a mix of Grande and Petite Champagne Cognacs, at least 50% of the former.)
Unlike many areas of France, Cognac is not known for its wine. Ugni Blanc makes nasty drinking wine—thin, “green” and highly acidic.
However, it is this personality that makes it, when distilled and aged in wood, a great brandy. If it were more full-flavored, Cognac would be too rough and brash, not the sometimes ethereal, always subtle, sip that it is. If it possessed less acidity, what edge or finish Cognac does have wouldn’t be possible.
It is the same with that famed sparkling wine made on the other side of France. Champagne is a great wine because it is a lesser wine transformed. Cognac is a great spirit because it is the wine’s soul that the distiller purifies and refines.
Distillation is in alembic stills (also spelled “alambic,” from the Arabic al-anbIq or “the still”), bulbous, onion-shaped stills that are traditional for making Cognac.
In the 16th century, Dutch traders and shippers installed these stills, in which they made what they called brandewijn, “burnt wine”—the derivation of our word “brandy.” (Silly Dutchmen: they thought that you could add water to a dram of their brandy and thereby reconstitute the wine from which it came.)
The spirit Cognac begins as just a double-distilled, crystal-clear and very potent eau de vie (“water of life”), poured into new (sometimes used) wood barrels. This spirit concentrates itself through several or many years, evaporating both its water and alcohol, and oxidizing slightly, gaining from both time and wood its wonderful caramel-like, crème brulée flavors, its nuances of honey, orange peel, smoke, vanilla and spice.
Cognac ages anywhere from two and one-half years, up to an age that (rarely) passes 60 years. Behind aging is the construct of blending, so that several years’ of Cognac assemble mainly to replicate each firm’s style or marque. For instance, a Remi Martin VSOP must smell and taste as it does year in, year out.
These blends have designations, depending on age —VS, VSOP, VO, XO, Réserve*, and a hoary set of names such as Vieille Réserve, Vieux, Hors d’Age, etc.—these senior monikers the idiosyncratic prerogative of each Cognac house. Nowadays, due to new laws in 1987, even vintage Cognacs exist.
How to enjoy Cognac
• Unlike undistilled wine, Cognacs do not age further after bottling. But do not lay them on their sides, for in time their higher alcohol eats away at cork. But like undistilled wine once opened, a bottle of Cognac does not last forever—however high its alcohol. One year or a bit more, and oxygen wreaks its inevitable toll.
• Giant, terrarium-like balloon snifters are foolish because they fart away those subtle aromas reached after so many years of careful aging.
• Use a small, chimney-shaped glass, as they do in Cognac itself.
• Never, ever warm a glass with anything but the cradle of your hand.
• Finally, don’t stick your nose into the glass, Sideways-like. A sniff of Cognac has “nose zones.” So, swirl the glass lightly (constant twirling is a needless affectation) and find them.
Hold the rim a bit away from, not directly under, your nose. That is the “comfort zone” (to close, and Cognac burns). The aromas wafting up high, as if you were looking over the glass, smell of fruits and flowers. Down low, pouring over the lower rim of the glass as if the scent were a waterfall, Cognac smells of the “'heavier” aromas of caramel or roasted nuts. In the middle, Cognac is vanilla-like and woody.
*VS (Very Superior) = the youngest spirit blended in is no less than 2½ years old; VSOP (Very Superior Old Pale), VO (Very Old), Réserve = the youngest is at least
4½ years; XO (Extra Old), etc, etc. = at least 6½ years. (Vintage [date] = only that year’s.]