Cognac_directory_FINAL

designed to be drunk when smoking cigars. To cut through
the rough smokiness of the cigars these have inevitably to
be heavy, rich, dull, caramelly and often unbalanced as well.
I tend to agree – but then I’m not a smoker – with David
Baker of Brandy Classics, the specialist importer, that ‘you
might just as well put cigar blends in your gravy browning’.
Purists often hanker after what they feel was a Golden
Age, in general before 1914. In fact it was literally golden
in character if not in quality, thanks to the far heavier doses
of sugary syrup common in the past when the merchants
enjoyed complete freedom as to the additives they could
employ. Then they were particularly aware of the need to
darken their brandies. Many British drinkers in particular
were fond of rich brown brandies, partly because of a fond
delusion that a dark brandy was an old brandy and partly
because they were powerful enough to be diluted, then with
soda, now with ice. In those not-so-far off Golden Days prune
juice, sweet, dark and a trifle nutty, was a favourite additive,
as it is even today with the brandy producers of Jerez, and if
more nuttiness was required, almond could be added to le
casks. Henry Vizetelly, the Victorian journalist, was shown a
special locked storehouse and was offered a sample:
from an enormous cask of the burnt-sugar syrup, which
‘brownifies’ the brandy (English customers admiring a
gypsy complexion), and which syrup is not nice at all;
and also a glass of softening syrup, made of one-fourth
sugar and three-fourths eau de vie, which sweetens and
smooths the cordial for lickerish lips, and which is so
delicious that you would not have the heart to reproach
your bitterest enemy if you caught him indulging in a
drop too much.
Even the normally puritanical Tovey approved of such
additions:
the old Cognac houses are very particular in the quality
of their colouring, and prepare it with great lie; it is
important, too, that it should be old, and it is made
up with Old Brandy. Consequently good old colouring
imparts a fulness and roundness to Brandy which is not
to be met with in the coloured spirit, although the latter
may merit the preference in character and finesse.
Both ‘dosage’ and dilution are delicate operations. Only a
few of the oldest cognacs, those of at least forty years old,
are weak enough to be sold without dilution; the younger
the blend, the stronger the basic spirit. To bring a threeyear-old
down from perhaps 60° to 40° is a delicate business.
‘The dilution can never be too brutal,’ says Michel Caumeil,
who compares it with landing an aeroplane – after all, there
are four hundred ingredients in the cognac which have to
be blended with the water. Reducing strength is bound to
be an important step which, if taken too quickly, can do
severe damage to the cognac, for spirit and water do not mix
naturally. When brandy is blended with water, molecules of
fatty acids clash and the result is the sort of cheap, soapy
cognacs found in all too many French supermarkets.
The decision is irreversible: ‘once a cognac has been cut,’
says Caumeil, ‘it can never go into one of our best blends.’
But even the meanest spirit cannot be brought down from
its cruising altitude (or undiluted strength) in one go. The
process occurs in several stages, each of them separated by
a period of months – and, say some blenders, the last stage,
reducing the strength from 45 to 40 per cent, is the most