Cognac: A Spirited Wine
by Michael Bryan

I accepted an invitation from the Moet-Hennessy group for a "cognac tasting" taking place at Au Pied de Cochon, a brasserie inside the new Intercontinental Hotel in Buckhead. Our speaker was thick-accented Laurent Lozano, one of six people on a committee deciding the aging & blending decisions for all Hennessy cognac.

The room was decorated with display cases of Hennessy Paradis and Richard (in french pronunciation REE-SHARD) cognacs. The fact that each of these bottles retails well above $1,000 was not lost on me. The appropriate Riedel cognac glass was in use, the lighting perfect, and the staff unobtrusively attentive.

Books will tell you how cognac is made, and your palate will show you it is something mysteriously special, but 3 1/2 hours with Laurent shapes your view of Cognac forever. This was their goal by the way and they succeeded on all points.

The Making of the Finest Brandy--Cognac
Laurent chose his words carefully, and he never used the general term of "brandy" nor the English word "spirit", denoting the 80 proof nature. Beyond the obvious "cognac" he talked of Eaux-de-Vies and wines. Yes, this beverage that will outlast you and me begins as wine.

As you drive 2 hours from Bordeaux city into the department of Charente you come into the vineyard area of Cognac, a region named for a village. The vines you see are a grape known locally as Ugni Blanc, also known as Colombard, Folle Blanche and Laurent even said Trebbiano, which was news to me. Ugni Blanc is slow ripening with two additional qualities: its high acidity and low alcohol from production.

Hennessy adds no SO2 (sulfur dioxide) prior to fermentation, unique in the world of winemaking. Once fermentation is complete, the 8% alcohol level & piercing acidity is more like a Champagne assemblage than a table wine. The wine is given over to two distillations via a Pot still (made of copper) where the less desireable (and cloudy) "heads" and "tails" are separated from the "heart" which is the clear spirit destined to become Cognac. This grape "spirit" of 140 proof, also known as an Eaux-de-Vie, will numb your lips with one sip, so I found out.

Now This is Where it Get's Interesting...
Wine changes annually with Mother Nature's whims, and no two years are identical. Thus the Eaux-de-Vie (translated water of life) also shows its character each year, and it is the job of the master blender (currently 7th generation Yenn Fillioux) to assess what type of oak aging the year's wine will require. Oak is a VERY important consideration in making Cognac.

Cognac consumes 40% of the French barrel market, and Hennessy alone purchases 5-10,000 each year. Yenn Fillioux and his team prefer barrels sourced from the Allier and Limousin forests, and make it a point to visit the felled trees to check the grain of the wood. They are searching for big grain in these old growth forrests.

Once an Eaux-de-Vie and its likely barrel-mate is chosen, they will be together for a time measured in decades if not centuries. And as different spirits will absorb the oils at at different rate for different barrels, there is an old misconception about the darker the Cognac the older. This is simply not always the case.

As these Eaux-de-Vie are nurtered in the cool Chai's of underground Cognac, the tasting is critical to assess development. The same group of men, taste the same day of each week, at the same time, in the same room. They attempt to control all outside variables so as to concentrate on the liquid gold.

Finally, with all of these bottles and barrels together, TCA (cork taint) is a serious and potentially devistating possibility. Thus two winery personelle are tasked full time with macerating corks in water, grinding them up, and then smelling the water.

Blending Our Own Cognac
A lasting impression from this day was to score three individual cognacs: 1986, 1978, 1975. From our personal scores, Laurent and his team arranged for us to blend a 750ml bottle using our respective scores. For me the 1978 with low aromatics and a long silky finish, was used in the largest quantity. The 1975 was next in succession with a perfumy nose, sweet spice and some woody notes. Finally, the blend was rounded out with the younger 1986 with visibly more "tannic" structure but carried meatier descriptors like dried flowers, toffee and some coconut.

When You Don't Want to Spit
Again, prudence suggests that after tasting 10 cognacs one would spit so as to not destroy any remaining notion of productivity in one's work day. Right. Let's try to recall when we abandoned that thought...perhaps it was the 1893 Eaux-de-Vie which scored a "101" (out of 100) from Alfred Fillioux, the 4th generation master blender and Yann's great grandfather. This Eaux-de-vie, not blended with other cognacs, was decadent on it's own, casting a perfect balance of youth, elegance and finish. Perhaps it was the non-stop pairing of Paradis during our multi-course lunch, again a Cognac blended from 25-130 year old Eaux-de-Vies.

No, I know when I in particular stopped spitting, got really quiet and crossed into another mental realm. It was the pouring of the Richard Hennessy (named for the founder), which has blended Eaux-de-Vie's from his personal cellar dating back to 1774. Imagine bringing to your lips a shimmering liquid, exquisite in golden tawny color, aromas of vanilla, and an enduring symphony of peppered walnuts and spice on the mouth. You realize as the taste layers ebb and flow on your palate that you are consuming something which (in part) pre-dates the Declaration of Independence. Can you bottle antiquity? This is what it would taste like.