Cognac_directory_FINAL

Torula compniacensis Richon, 17 the famous fungus that
thrives (as who would not) on the fumes from maturing
cognac in the rich, damp air of warehouses full of casks of
maturing brandy. It is so omnipresent that the local fraud
squad allegedly uses helicopters to look for the tell-tale
colour of the fungus on the roofs of buildings where illicit
stocks of cognac are hidden.
The old sites had two problems, fire and flood, neither
entirely conquered even today. In December 1982 when the
Charente flooded, casks of brandy bobbed about like life rafts,
and the dark stains left by the receding waters can still be seen
half-way up the walls of Royer’s chais by the river in Jarnac. The
firms had been warned two days in advance but nevertheless
even Rémy Martin was particularly badly affected because
they ended up with casks half-full of old cognacs with loose
bungs floating down the river. In the end the flood lasted a full
month. Fire is an even more serious hazard. Vizetelly remarked
that if Cognac ‘were once to catch fire at any point, it would
explode like a mountain of lucifer matches struck by lightning,
and would blaze afterwards like an ever-burning omelette-aurhum,
intended to be gazed at but never eaten.’ Rather more
limited conflagrations are a regular occurrence. Yet when Hine
built a new chai in 1973 everyone laughed when the firm
installed sprinklers. After both Martell and Rémy suffered from
blazes people stopped laughing. Despite the disadvantages of a
riverside location, both Martell and Hennessy still rely on their
old sites. Rémy did not inherit any historic chais and now owns
a number of rather unromantic sprawls in and around Cognac.
In Jarnac Courvoisier dominates one bank of the river.
17 This special fungus was recognised in 1881 by Dr Richon, hence its
name.
Of course there are many tricks to the trade when
preparing cognacs for sale. For instance, they can be
returned to new oak for a few months to give them a final
boost of tannin and then put back into old casks to avoid
too much hardness. Since the arrival of the appellation
system the merchants are limited in the ability to tamper
with their cognacs. They can add as much boisé as they like
and 8 grams of sugar per litre but only one part of caramel.
Unmentionable is the alleged use of artificial flavours
imported by a handful of unscrupulous houses from Dutch
fragrance manufacturers. Some merchants disguise the lack
of any specific character in their cognacs with relatively
heavy doses of caramel, but this can easily be detected from
the rawness of the alcohol and the burning sensation it
leaves on the palate. But because the sugars from the hemicellulose
in the wood gradually infiltrate the cognac after
twenty years, Hennessy for one, finds that it has to put
only 2 grams of sugar, a quarter of the permitted level, into
each litre – the Tesserons say that they have only 2 parts in
10,000 in their cognacs. The sugary syrup softens the young
cognacs and ‘rounds’ them, while the caramel, neutral to
the taste, merely standardises the colour. Nevertheless, the
best accolade Charles Walter Berry could give to an 1830
cognac was that it was ‘pure’ and had ‘never been touched
or refreshed’.
Because the Chinese and the Japanese equate darkness
with age, the blends sent to the Far East may well be darker
than those sold in Europe or the United States. They also
tend to be richer so that they can be diluted through
mixing with ice without losing their flavour. The Japanese,
for instance, were unhappy at the dry intensity of Martell’s
cognacs. And there’s a new phenomenon – the many blends