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Tag: brandy

Different Types of Brandy

Posted / in Brandy Education, Learning about Brandy, News and tagged , , , , ,

Here at Brandyclassics and Bunch & Bushel we sell three main types of French brandy: cognac, armagnac and calvados.

Brandy is the generic name for spirits that have been made from fruit and produced all over the world.  But some brandies have very specific guidelines concerning their production.  So what is the difference between our products?  This can be summarised as follows:

brandyCOGNAC

  • Made from specific grape varieties
  • Produced in the Cognac region of France only
  • The eau de vie must be distilled twice
  • Distilled in copper pot Charentais stills.

ARMAGNAC

  • Made from specific grape varieties
  • Produced in the Armagnac region of France only
  • The eau de vie is distilled just once
  • Produced on a continuous Alembic still

CALVADOS

  • Made from apples
  • Produced in the Calvados region in Normandy
  • Top cru calvados must use the double distillation method on a pot still to be labelled Pays d’Auge
  • Column still distillation is mandatory to produce Calvados Domfrontais

Read more about the production of these wonderful French brandies on our Brandy Education page.  Another useful article outlining the differences between 12 types of brandy can be found here.

 

Father’s Day Gifts for Sunday 20th June 2021

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Father'sCognac is known as the King of Brandies so makes the perfect gift this Father’s Day.  What better way to say “Thanks”, “I Love You” or just, “Enjoy”?

It’s been a tricky time for everyone these last 12 months so, in preparation for this year’s special day we have spectacular offers on three of our very own Hermitage Cognacs:

Hermitage 2010 Grande Champagne is our latest vintage, ideal for those wanting to try a new cognac.

Hermitage Cafe 20 Grande Champagne is dark and robust, perfect for the coffee lover.

Hermitage 40 Year Old Grande Champagne is a Master medal winner, the choice of connoisseurs.

And to tempt your taste buds even further, the Master of Malt Blog includes our 2021 Master Medal Winner, Hermitage 1990, as one of its Top Ten Cognacs for Father’s Day.  Enjoy!

Armagnac Crus

Posted / in Brandy Education, Learning about Brandy, News, The History of Armagnac and tagged , , , ,

armagnac crusArmagnac is produced in the south west of France in the departments of Gers and Landes in the region known as Gascony. The region has very little industry and the landscape is relatively flat, very green and the people are friendly, living an altogether quieter life than those in Cognac to the north. Indeed, most of the land is given over to agriculture and perhaps well described by Nick Faith, the famous writer on French Brandies, as the land of Fois Gras.  An ideal base for armagnac crus.

The climate is perhaps a little warmer than in Cognac but still enjoys the temperate conditions so necessary for growing grapes. These are made into wine and then distilled into the oldest spirit in the world, armagnac. It was perhaps made famous by the French musketeer d’Artagnan and immortalised by Alexandre Dunas.

There are three armagnac crus, the smallest is Bas Armagnac. However, whilst it is the smallest in land mass, it is the largest armagnac production region making around 57% of all the armagnac produced. The department is in the north west of the region, closest to the Atlantic where, millions of years ago, the sea washed in sandy and silty soil which now produces some of the finest armagnacs. These fine spirits are fruity, light and delicate and regarded as the best armagnacs in the region. The main town in the Bas department is Eauze, a small market town where the BNIA can be found.

To the East of Bas is the second cru of armagnac known as Ténarèze. The department is slightly bigger than Bas and in the centre lies the town of Condom with its beautiful buildings and Armagnac museum. The cru comprises about 40% of all the armagnac vineyards and the armagnacs produced here tend to develop much slower than those in Bas. The clay and limestone soil produces rich and fruity spirits which are often used whilst relatively young to make generic blends.

The largest cru is Haut Armagnac. It surrounds Ténarèze on three sides, north, east and south and the main town is Auch which is in the centre of the region. The cru is often referred to as white armagnac as the soil contains an abundance of limestone. The viticulture was developed here in the 19th century to meet the high market demand but has since dwindled away to only a few producers who make largely uninteresting armagnacs.

Whilst armagnac is not so well known as its big brother cognac, it is a beautiful spirit.  It has many rich and fruity flavours, the most common being prune, which can often be identified in the Delord range.  They are one of the older producers in the region situated in the top cru, Bas Armagnac.

Christmas 2020 Deliveries

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ChristmasFor Christmas deliveries to addresses in the UK please ensure your orders are with us by 10 am on Tuesday 22nd December 2020.

Generally UK orders placed before 12 noon will be delivered the following working day but please be aware that although we are able to process orders within 1 working day, Parcelforce are not always able to meet their normal delivery times at present.

Our deliveries to America are also taking longer than usual due to a shortage of flights so all orders to the rest of the world should be placed as soon as possible please.  More information can be found in our Terms and Conditions.

XO Brandy – What Does It Mean?

Posted in Brandy Education, Learning about Brandy, News and tagged , , , ,

XO BrandyXO brandy, XO cognac. XO armagnac. Why is the term XO used so often when few of us actually know what it means? Originally, XO stood for Extra Old. In terms of age, up until 2018, an XO cognac had to be at least 6 years old but this was also the required minimum age of Napoleon Cognac. So, after decades of promising change, the controlling body of cognac, the BNIC, agreed to make the minimum barrel age of an XO cognac 10 years old. This is important because cognacs do not mature once they have been taken from their oak casks and placed in glass. Armagnac also stepped into line and now age their XO brandies for a minimum of ten years.

The problem with all this is that brandies, particularly cognacs, need to be in a barrel for much longer than ten years to reach optimum maturity, so an XO brandy is actually not very old. It should be noted that some of the smaller brandy houses keep their XO cognacs in the barrel for longer than the required minimum age in order to produce a more mellow, flavoursome product. More recently it has been recognised that a 10 year old cognac is not particularly old so another generic age statement has been introduced, it is called XXO. The minimum age for an XXO cognac (Extra Extra Old) is 14 years in an oak cask. Even this is not long enough for cognacs from the premier cru, Grande Champagne. They are the slowest of all brandies to mature and may take up to twice as long as cognacs from other crus, requiring 50 years or even more.

The term XO is widely misunderstood and even at ten years old some brandies are only just drinkable. At Hermitage Cognacs, we do not sell generic XO brandies. We prefer to offer an age statement on each one to help customers understand how long their brandy has matured in the cask.

Brandy Bottles

Posted / in Brandy Education, Learning about Brandy and tagged ,

Glass containers and bottles are believed to have first been made around 1500 BC but serious use of containers made out of glass probably did not occur until around 100 BC. More practical applications for glass were established with the advent of glass blowing, probably around a thousand years later. Modern glass bottles are made in commercial moulds and most bottles that contain alcoholic beverages, including brandy bottles, are made of clear glass.

That however has not always been the case. The traditional brandy bottle started life as a green or, as in the case of cognac, black glass container. The dark colour may have been chosen to hide any sediment that had been left in the bottom of the barrel.  Modern glass however is pure and bright which enhances the cognac in the bottle to the highest level. Today we use a wide range of such bottles, many of which are produced from recycled glass.  Although the quality of the glass used varies considerably, we choose to buy all our bottles from Saverglass who have a large depot in Cognac.

Hermitage 1947The size of early hand blown bottles often depended on the quantity of glass the blower had on his pipe and so the quantity each bottle held was largely guess work.  It has now become tradition that the cognac bottle is an upright 70cl size but the volume only became metric in the mid-1950s. Before that, all spirits were measured in imperial measurements.  Strangely, European spirit bottles are now all 70cl whereas in the USA they opt for the slightly larger wine bottle size of 75cl.

Today, there is a general consistency of bottle shapes havingBaron de Sainte-Fauste developed from region to region and beverage to beverage. For cognac the very basic upright bottle shape is known as the “Cognacaise”.  At Hermitage, we use the “Exception” bottle but also a range of carafes to which many customers are attracted. The traditional bottle shape for armagnac is the “Basquaise” which is round with flat sides and for calvados the longer necked “Normandy” bottle is still generally supplied in bottle green.

Read more Technical Topics on our Brandy Education page.