Unraveling the Secrets of Cognac

BY JASON WILSON | SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

Cognac is a secretive, confounding place. The people who make Cognac can be tight-lipped and evasive, and don’t like questions from outsiders. A simple tasting-room question to a producer such as, “How old are the eaux-de-vie in this blend?” might be met with a shrug and an inscrutable answer like, “Eh, a minimum of 15 years, but also some 30-and 50-year-old.” This answer may be completely at odds with what’s found on a company’s own website, which might state that the average age (or the more nebulous “tasting age”) is “from 10 to 14 years old.”

“If I was standing outside with a Cognac maker and asked him what the weather was, he wouldn’t give me an answer,” said Nicolas Palazzi of PM Spirits, who imports a portfolio of smaller Cognac producers.

Cognac generally does not have an age stated on the bottle (which is vexing to a spirits aficionado accustomed to whiskey). The youngest brandy in a VSOP must be at least four years old, but most producers claim that they blend much older brandies into their VSOPs. Until this year, XO had to be a minimum of six years old, but I’ve rarely met a producer who didn’t insist that his XO was far older. Some insist they never release an XO younger than 20 or 25 years. As of this year’s rule change, however, the minimum age of XO is now legally 10 years old. Even then, an XO bottled before March 31, 2018 could still have brandies as young as six years old, and technically be sold until March 31, 2019. I have no idea if there’s been a mass recall of XOs as of April 1st — likely not, so I’m guessing there are still plenty of less-than-10-year-old XOs on store shelves and back bars. But sometime in the future — eventually, hopefully — all XOs on the market will be older than 10 years old.

Inside the tasting lab at Delamain

Yes, Cognac Will Make Your Head Spin

Most of the larger Cognac houses, though they may wax poetic about vineyards and rustic distillation, buy wine or eau-de-vie from a vast network of hundreds of smaller growers and producers. “There’s fewer than a dozen houses that don’t sell to the big companies,” said Amy Pasquet, of Jean-Luc Pasquet, a producer with seven hectares in Grande Champagne (and among those who do not sell to the big houses).

For most mass-market blends there is very little transparency about what they’re buying and from where, and what the production methods might be. On the flip side, many of the small craft producers — the ones that are the darlings of critics and connoisseurs — can be cagey about just how much they sell to the big guys. Sometimes they’re only saving a few very special casks to bottle under their own artisan labels.

This is a region dominated by the Big Four — Hennessy, Martell, Rémy Martin, and Courvoisier — which sell about 90% of all Cognac consumed. Hennessy alone controls about 40% of the worldwide market. And it’s important to understand that Cognac is (and always has been) an international spirit, driven by tastes and trends in China, Singapore, Russia, the US and elsewhere. Many of the most successful, historic houses were founded by outsiders from Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia.

Jarnac town center

Today, about 97% of Cognac is exported, leaving only a tiny fraction to be enjoyed at home in France. The US is the single largest consumer, with sales more than doubling over the past decade, from around 42 million bottles in 2008 to 87 million bottles in 2018. Much of that is at the lower end, and the majority of those sales are of one product: Hennessy VS (at around $35 per bottle).