Category: The Cognac Process

By around the end of the 17th century the trade in burnt or reduced wine had become safe in that other European clients from England, Ireland and increased trade from Holland and a little from Scandinavia had created a more profitable trade than grain and the bois (wooded) areas away from the Champagnes were cleared for vine production. In the 13th century, King John, ruler of England and Western France, appointed the town of Cognac its freedom. Three centuries later Cognacs freedom had been reinforced by its most distinguished native, King Francis I, the very model of a Renaissance monarch… Read more

Around the middle of the 16th century the Cognaçais had been liberated from the English and lost some of their most important markets. But they were well placed to satisfy the new demand from the Dutch, who were seeking concentrated wines to render palatable the generally putrid drinking water in their ships. At first they imported the wine from the Saintonge to “burn” in imported copper stills from Sweden. The Dutch authorities disliked using precious grain, the alternative raw material for spirits, because it was an important staple food. The need for the brandywijn increased and the Dutch started distilling… Read more

Originally the town Cognac was important as a crossing over the river. In the Middle Ages it became a notable trading centre for salt, the regions first stable export, and then for wine. These provided Cognac with an incomparable network of contacts in Northern Europe, since both depended on markets principally in Britain but also in the Low Countries and Scandinavia. Local brokers throughout the Saintonge – the region from Angoulême to the sea – would buy the salt or wine on behalf of foreign buyers. The casks were shipped down the Charente to Tonnay-Charente, the tidal limit downstream on… Read more

In the latter half of the 17th Century the fashion conscious world of Restoration London, like so many others before and since, lived largely in public. The “café” society congregating in the capital’s coffee houses experimented with a whole host of new drinks. Some, like tea, coffee and chocolate were non-alcoholic. Most were wines; claret, port, sherry, more or less fortified to withstand the journey to Britain (and to accord with the English taste for robust liquors). Only one, from Cognac, a small town in Western France was a spirit. Since then cognac has never looked back. From newspaper advertisements… Read more

Although the history of cognac probably goes back 500 years it has been universally recognised as the finest of all the hundreds of spirits distilled from grapes. For the sheer depth and intensity, fruitiness, subtlety of bouquet, warmth and complexity of flavour and length of time for which the flavour lingers on the palate, cognac remains incomparable. The ability to extract so much of the essential flavour from the grape is no accident. It involves possessing the right soil and climate, choosing the right grape varieties, using the appropriate distillation process and then enhancing the inherent quality through long storage… Read more