The 43 year old Grande Champagne Cognac by Hermitage is probably going to be of the finest in our history. It is produced from vineyards around Segonzac in the very centre of Grande Champagne. The distillers have four large stills with 123 hectares of vineyards around Segonzac and based in key areas where the very finest conditions exist. The grape variety is all Ugni Blanc. Their main cellars are quite large and are on two levels each containing probably several thousand 350 litre barrels. The walls of the cellars are thick and the lower floor is below ground level allowing good… Read more

Figures released today by La Fédération Nationale des Safer (SAFER), the national inventory of land transactions and prices which includes vineyards, is indicating that whilst there is little movement in vineyard prices from last year, there are many vineyard owners who would like to sell some or part of their land if it was possible. Land in the cognac region is relatively cheap when compared with the land in such regions as St Emillion, where figures as much as 200,000€  are around six times higher than those in Cognac at about 35,000€ a hectare. Perhaps more worrying is the number… Read more

Ragnaud Sabourin is the only known producer of cognac who still uses all eight permitted grape varieties. The main grape variety used in Cognac is the Ugni Blanc, which represents about 95% of all grapes used. Colombard and the old pre-phylloxera grape Folle Blanche are the second most used grapes, representing around 4.5% of the cognac mix – so the remaining five varieties are only very rarely known, let alone seen. They are Jurançon, Blanc Ramé, Bouilleaux, Chalosse and the oldest of all the Balzac blanc. Many cognac professionals will advise that the grape variety does not make a significant… Read more

For more than a year we have been discussing the potential trade opportunities in Asia. We were unfortunate last year as we had planned to enter trade through the food and wine exhibition in Singapore. Despite having set up all the display work for the show, we were scuppered at the last moment by a giant ash cloud looming overhead from Iceland and we were able to reach the show until the last day. This year we were helped by UKTI who set up a number of key players in the field. Our aspirations were for a single distributor who… Read more

We have recently returned from Hong Kong where we have been working closely with UKTI in setting up distribution of Hermitage Pure Vintage Cognacs. Our visit included meetings with four specialist luxury drinks distributors who have now tasted and explored the possibilities of selling Hermitage cognacs to their customers. They are all involved with sales to the luxury sector of the Hong Kong hotels and restaurants markets and their clients are excited at being able to buy non generically labelled cognacs for the first time. Brandyclassics expect to be receiving their first orders from Hong Kong within weeks. Many of… Read more

We are proud to announce a rare and very special limited edition cognac, a 70 year old Grande Champagne cognac, will be available to the cognac connoisseur very shortly! During a recent visit to the Charente when we were discussing old cognacs with a producer, we came across a very rare Grande Champagne cognac hiding in a cellar. By a quirk of coincidence not only is this cognac 70 years old (that is 70 years in a barrel),  there are also only 70 bottles available. This fine old nectar has a wonderful rich toffee, almond aroma, this is also in… Read more

One of the difficulties we always find when deciding upon the flavour of a particular cognac is the time of the day we did the tasting. The problem being that our taste buds have greater efficiency in the mornings than in the afternoon or evenings. Not only that but our perception of what we taste can also vary at different times of the day, so a cognac that tastes of roasted walnuts in the morning may taste of green walnuts in the afternoon or vice versa. The sensation of taste is closely related to that of smell and taste is detected… Read more

Many people often ask us to explain the right way to taste brandies so we thought we would make a new year’s resolution to encourage a wider understanding of cognac appreciation. Firstly the glass. Big brandy balloons allow too big a surface area of the brandy exposed to the air. The professional glass is a small tulip shaped glass, but a small brandy balloon will be fine. The cognac should be rolled around the sides of the glass to allow it to form tears down the side. Never swirl the spirit as this will release too much alcohol from the… Read more

At last, a major cognac house has recognised the need for numbers on bottles! Courvoisier have introduced age statements with their 12 and 21 year old cognacs. Here at Brandyclassics we have campaigned for more than a decade the need for customers to benefit from knowing the age of the cognacs they buy. We recognised that customers have become confused with the generic descriptions used by the big houses to sell cognacs. Not only are they unaware of the age of cognacs used in such descriptions as VS, VSOP and XO, they have also come to recognise that there is virtually no… Read more

Martell is the oldest of Cognacs big four firms. It was started in 1715 when Jean Martell arrived in Cognac from his native Jersey, which was in those days a centre for smuggling brandy into Britain. He married (in succession), the daughters of two Cognac merchants. The second, Rachel Lallemand, was descended from one of the earliest brandy merchants in Cognac. After Jeans death she carried on under the name of Verve Martell-Lallemand. Martell became the leading firm in Cognac during the revolutionary period and is still one of the two largest. In the mid 19th century control passed to… Read more