Cognac_directory_FINAL

pretty brutal: I noticed that two brandies from the Petite
Champagne were dismissed as ‘grape jam’ and ‘tisane’ –
herb tea!
All the blenders are juggling a number of variables:
the type of oak they are using; the age of the casks; the
length of time for which they mature their different levels
of cognacs; and, crucially, the region from which they buy
their cognac. At least three merchants, Rémy Martin, Hine
and Delamain, sell only brandies from the Champagnes,
as of course do the increasing number of grower-distillers
who sell their own brandies from the region. For their VS
(formerly Three-Star), VSOP and, in many cases, their
Napoleons and XOs, all the other merchants inevitably
rely on brandies from the Bois and the Borderies. But
over recent decades they have become much choosier as to
which corners of the Fins Bois they use. None buy from
the west of Cognac, and they buy very little, if any, from
the Bons Bois. Recently three firms – Leyrat, Léopold
Gourmel, and Château de Beaulon – have headed the fight
to prove that fine, elegant, floral, long-lived cognacs can be
made from chosen spots in the Fins Bois. Beaulon is on a
special patch of chalk on the Gironde estuary while Leyrat
and Gourmel rely on estates in what used to be called Les
Petites Champagnes de Blanzac – a small town in the south
east of the Fins Bois.
A number of the bigger and more serious houses have
a secret weapon: using brandies from the Borderies which
are very special, ‘nutty’, intense and capable of ageing for
several decades. ‘They are well-rounded after fifteen years,’
says Pierre Frugier, formerly the chief blender at Martell,
which uses a great deal of the brandy in its Cordon Bleu.
THE BIG FOUR
A mere four people, including a woman for the first
time in the near-four hundred year history of Cognac,
are responsible for producing around 150 million bottles
of cognac a year. They are the chef de caves or maîtres
de chai for the four firms which account for the vast
majority of cognacs sold in the world.
Their job is even more complex than that facing their
only real brethren, the people responsible for producing
Scotch and other whiskies. Both groups have to produce
millions of bottles in a range of ages and qualities in
quantities which can fluctuate widely from year to year
– and even more so from decade to decade. But the
Cognacais have a unique complication: they are not
buying their raw material wholesale from a handful of
grain merchants but in relatively small quantities from
several thousand small farmers who may provide grapes,
or wine, or cognac which is usually newly distilled but
may have been aged. So they have to add diplomacy to
their other essential qualities – such as expert taster and
blender to name but two.
It is the more extraordinary that only one of the four is
a native of Cognac. Yann Fillioux, the veteran blender for
Hennessy, far and away the biggest firm in Cognac, is in
some ways a godfather figure to the whole community.
Indeed, he is the seventh member of the family to have
blended cognac for the Hennessy family and since he
succeeded his uncle Maurice twenty years ago has had
to double production and introduce a number of new
cognacs while not diluting the style or quality of the