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A Cooperage in Cognac

I've been to nearly 50 distilleries of all kinds of spirits, but a few weeks ago was my first visit to a real cooperage- finally! Vicard Tonnelleries is a 6th generation cooperage near Cognac in France, where they produce 60,000 French, Eastern European, and American oak barrels each year.

American oak? Yes indeed. They buy trees in the US, let them dry a bit (I believe they said they're split into staves in the US), ship them to France and make barrels out of them there. Then some of them are shipped back to the US and other countries for use.

Speaking of drying barrels, American oak staves only have to dry for two years, while French oak dries for I believe four years. At this cooperage all staves are air-seasoned (left to dry outdoors) while in the US many are dried in kilns.

American oak barrels were described as aromatic and useful in short aging of spirits, whereas French oak barrels have more tannins, add structure to wine and spirits, and are better for long aging. French oak barrels are more expensive, but that's also in part because they're cut differently than American oak barrels. French oak staves are cut so that only 30 percent of the log is used, whereas American oak staves use the opposite- 70 percent.

This huge cooperage is very automated, yet dozens of workers end up working on every barrel. The cooperage has machines and staging areas for splitting logs, further splitting, making staves, assembling barrels, making lids, installing lids, toasting barrels, testing, labeling, and I'm sure many other processes. During and between each one, a worker is on hand to do physical tasks as simple as moving barrels and as complicated as fitting a lid.

When a barrel is assembled by hand, staves are placed into a circle with one or two hoops around the bottom, then the top staves are pulled closer together by fitting a cable around the top staves, heating the inside of the barrel staves with fire, and cooling the outside with water while pulling the cable tight. Here though, the half-assembled barrel goes into a giant steam machine and the cable is tightened automatically. When it comes out, the cooper fits the top hoop and tightens it on.

They also make some gigantic barrels of the sort you'd use for blending, fermenting, and storage. I think one would make an awesome cottage for the backyard, but then again I'm basically 12 years old and want to build a fort.

October 2, 2009
A Visit to the House of Remy Martin Cognac

In France recently, I had a tour and dinner at the house of Remy Martin in Cognac. They don't allow photography in the cellar, so this post is a little light on the pictures. (Suck it up and read.)

We entered the building at night so it's hard to recall exactly what the house complex looks like, but if memory serves me right the buildings (almost a campus) was a combination of old and new architecture, the traditional tan stone buildings integrated with new glass-heavy buildings. We did a walk through of the distilling demonstration and aging cellars, then headed upstairs for a meal.

Remy's products are made from grapes grown in either the Grande Champagne or Petite Champagne regions. The VS product is 100% Petite Champagne,the higher end products are 100% Grande Champagne, and everything in the middle is a blend of the two regions. (The above picture is the blending room, by the way.)

A blend of at least 51% Grande Champagne and the rest Petite Champagne may be labeled as "Fine Champagne" on the bottle, and most of Remy's bottles are. As can be seen on the descriptions of the range here, each successive bottling labeled as Fine Champagne has a higher percentage of Grand Champagne than the last.

The real surprise of the night was the pre-dinner lounge with passed fish appetizers and the new Remy Ice Boxx. When the cognac (We had the VSOP- not sure if the VS is standard) was chilled to -18C in these machines it was surprisingly flavorful and nutty and not at all what I expected.

Cognac as the new Jager? I can't wait to see how this turns out.

September 30, 2009
Cognac Tesseron Visit

While in France recently I visited the cognac house of Tesseron. This brand is notable for having probably the second largest collection of old cognacs in demijohns in all of Cognac.

Cognac can only age for so long in barrel before the spirit becomes flabby and loses its aromatic qualities. For cognac made from grapes grown in the Grande Champagne (the growing area producing grapes that age the longest), most cognac caps out at no more than 75 years in wood, though there are exceptions. After that point, the spirit is transferred to glass demijohns- round bottles about the size of a water cooler refill. These are stored in what is called the Paradis cellar at each house, and a visit to the paradis is a part of every cognac house tour.

The cellars at Tesseron date back to the 13th century and were once part of a crypt of the local church. We visited two cellars and saw rows and rows of cognacs dating to the 1860's- and were lucky enough to be able to sample some. This time is just as Phylloxera came to the region, destroying nearly all the vines in Cognac. These old grape vines were of a different variety than the Ugni Blanc planted today, so being able to taste them is quite special.

Like many brands, Tesseron has a long history of selling its unaged and aged eau de vie to the big houses, but then decided to sell some under its own name. The brand Tesseron was launched in 2003 and releases only products XO and above in age- no VS or VSOP.

Tesseron has several releases that would be vintage-dated but this is not legal in cognac unless the dates can be absolutely proven. (More on this in a future post.) Brands like Tesseron try to get around this by not labeling the bottles but letting people know what's in it. They label their bottles "Lot 90" "Lot 76" and so on, to imply the date of the cognac, but I did not verify with the brand that everything in the bottle comes from the year of the "lot" on the label and older.

Tesseron also sells cognac in 1.75 Liter bottles, which is fun. They have both the "lot" line and these sexy round "Extreme" line bottles shaped like a round demijohn. I think the black one would look particularly good in my apartment. (It's the holiday season coming up, I'm just sayin'.)

September 28, 2009
Cognac Visit: Bache Gabrielsen

While in the Cognac region of France, I stopped in to cognac house Bache Gabrielsen for a visit. I was greeted by fourth-generation family member Herve Bache-Gabrielsen and taken to their tasting room around a wooden table in the upstairs office.

Bache Gabrielsen is located on a small, nondescript street in Cognac. There are few signs to identify that the street holds buildings for blending, aging, bottling, and other storage. The company owns other warehouses as well (it's not safe or legal to hold too much cognac within the city- fire would be a very bad thing) but the white buildings on a narrow side street give no clue as to their rather large storage capacity indoors.

The brand is Norwegian though they've been in Cognac for 100 years, and still their largest markets are Norway and other Scandinavian countries. It turns out that Norway consumes the most cognac per person in the world. Who knew?

Herve also said that there is currently a glut of sorts of aging barrels due to a past overproduction of cognac and a previous economic collapse. Thus there is a lot of 20+ year old cognac sitting around in barrels that producers are using in their XO products. Eventually though this glut will dry up and he predicts it may be hard for some producers to maintain a consistent flavor profile in their products when there is less older eau de vie around to go into them.

Smaller brands like Bache Gabrielsen have both problems and opportunities in the market. They can release small batch products without the overhead and marketing support of larger brands, but on the other hand they are selling so much less it may be hard to educate consumers on what they're drinking.

Bache Gabrielsen has two cognac lines that they call Classic and Pure and Rustic. The Classic line, like most all cognacs, has caramel added for color consistency and sugar to soften the spirit, but the Pure and Rustic line (that is called "Natur and Eleganse" in the US) has neither. I found it definitely had a stronger alcohol attack on the tongue and was a more 'raw' tasting spirit, but not in a bad way- more like rye whiskey as opposed to bourbon. (I wonder if it might mix better in cocktails than most cognac.) I thought the XO was a particularly good balance between alcohol sharpness and wood softness.

All in all, it was great to see this small house hidden on a narrow street within the city limits, doing something new in old Cognac.

September 24, 2009
A Day at Hennessy

The first stop on a big trip to Cognac, France last week was Hennessy. I met up with my host Cyrille at the Hennessy office, one of the Hennessy buildings that dominates the waterfront on the Charente River in the small city of Cognac.

First we talked a bit about sales. Hennessy sells the most of their youngest expression, the VS, totaling something like 80 percent of sales volume, and most of that is to the US. The US generally consumes most congnac at the VS level, whereas in Asian markets consumers in particular tend to drink VSOP and older expressions.

Next we headed to the vineyards and distillery. Hennessy owns several hectares of vineyard along with some distilleries and even forests, but these don't make up very much of their total production. These facilities are partially for testing and experimentation.

As with most cognac houses, Hennessy buys most of their eau de vie on the open market or through winegrowers with whom they have contracts. They avoid buying from the Bois Ordinaires and Bon Bois regions, concentrating on the four innermost growing regions for their purchases even in their VS and VSOP blends. Hennessy uses the typical Ugni Blanc and Folle Blanche grapes, and is encouraging their growers to look into Folignan as well.

All in all, the Cognac region has 70,000 hectares of vines on about 6000 properties (6000 winegrowers) and Hennessy alone deals with about 2000 growers. There are about 120 professional distillers in cognac, which prepare the eau de vie for the 150 cognac houses.

Hennessy doesn't own a barrel building cooperage, but instead one for barrel repair. That was our next stop. As barrels are always stored on their side with the bung hole facing up, even non-perfect staves can still be used for the bung stave. As is also common, Hennessy uses several sizes of barrels, larger ones for older cognacs as they have a smaller cognac-to-wood ratio.

We traveled next back into town and across the Charente river by boat from the main Hennessy building are some of the aging warehouses. There they age eau de vie in batches labeled with the distillery or vineyard and the year. As the eau de vie evaporates out of casks, young ones destined for VS are topped up with water, while older ones are topped up with the liquid from one sacrificial barrel from the same batch.

I then tasted through the line, along with some new-make spirit and some older unblended eau de vie. I learned that some eau de vies are identified right off the still as special and are not put into new barrels to add structure as they already have it, but are moved right to used ones for long aging. Thus at the point of distillation, much of the eau de vie is being selected as to whether it will sit in a barrel for two or twenty years.

Hennessy is located in Cognac and is open for daily tours most of the year, or one can just visit the gift shop downstairs and the display of advertising from the last 100 years upstairs.

September 22, 2009
All About Cognac

I went to Cognac last week to learn about cognac. I learned a lot.

So what is cognac, anyway?

Cognac is an aged brandy distilled from grapes in the Charente region of France.

The Cognac region is separated into six delimited subregions based primarily on the makeup of the soil: Grande Champagne, Petite Champagne, Borderies, Fine Bois, Bons Bois, and Bois Ordinaires. The Grande and Petite Champagne regions have the most chalky soil.

Planted in the region is mostly Ugni Blanc grapes, with others like Folle Blanche and Columbard sometimes also used to make cognac. These grape varieties make horrible table wine, but are good for distillation. They are high in acid and low in alcohol content at harvest. The flavors in this largely neutral grape are concentrated through distillation and are teased out over aging in oak barrels.

Grapes grown in the Grande and Petite Champagne region are able to age a long time, while those from the outer regions need less time in wood to show their full and fruity potential. Thus many brands reserve their Grande and Petite Champagne-produced barrels for their longer-aged blends.

First the grapes must be harvested in the fall, then fermented into wine and distilled. Most harvesting is mechanical. Fermentation is started with yeast recommended by the government. Distillation runs through the winter and must legally be finished by the end of March, though most are finished far sooner. Cognac must be twice distilled in pot stills limited in size to 25 hectoliters in usable volume.

Most cognac is aged in oak from the French Limousin or Troncais forests, and purchased from the government-run forest agency. Most of the trees used for barrels are 100 years old. French oak is high in tannins that help spirits age longer and add structure to the mouthfeel of the finished product.

The aging process is not as static as you might think. First, newly made spirit is added to newish (up to 3-5 years old) barrels as these contain the most tannins. Depending on the cognac house and the previous number of uses of the barrel, the spirit may sit in new barrels for just a couple months to more than a year. Then the spirit is moved to old barrels where the tannins in the wood have less effect, but the porousness of wood allows continued interaction with the outside world via oxidation and evaporation.

Most all cognac is a blend of aged spirit (eau de vie) from many vineyards and many different vintages. It is the master blender's job to ensure consistency of a blended cognac product despite a big variation in the individual eau de vies that go into it.

Cognac labeled VS must be a minimum of 2 years, VSOP has a 4 year minimum, and Napoleon and XO have a six year minimum though this is being raised to 10 years for XO in 2016 (most XO's on the market are already older than ten years and won't have to change). Cognacs may be single vintage bottlings (all eau de vie comes from a single year) and labeled on the bottle. They may not say an average or minimum age on the bottle (example: "ten years old") as they can with scotch whisky.

Older blends are not just further aged versions of younger blends- they are usually separate products. For example, a brand may compose their VS product primarily of eau de vie from the Fine Bois, while for their XO products most will come from Grande Champagne.

Cognac production is rather interesting, in that most cognac houses are only blending and aging houses. They do not traditionally own their own vineyards or their own distilleries, and they don't even need to own the aging facilities. (In reality the brands I visited owned some vineyards and distilleries but nothing close to the amount for their full production. It seems most all houses age most of their own eau de vie rather than buy it already aged.)

The "big four" cognac houses that make up around 75-80% of the world market are Hennessy, Martell, Courvoisier, and Remy Martin. There are many smaller houses, of course, and some of these own vineyards and distill, age, and blend on-site.

In future blog posts, I'll talk about some brand specifics.

September 21, 2009
Beverages by the Bowlful in San Francisco Magazine

My latest story in San Francisco Magazine is online here. The pictures are way better in the print version.

Beverages by the bowlful

By Camper English, Photograph by Shaun Roberts

Though
punch predates the classic cocktails San Franciscans have been sipping
for the past few years, it has taken a while for local mixologists to
commit to it. But in this post-ultralounge era of quieter celebration
and more complicated drinks, well-crafted booze in bulk makes a lot
more sense than the overplayed bling of bottle service at nightclubs.
With punch, you’re paying for an expertly prepared, jumbo-size
cocktail, instead of a marked-up and underchilled bottle of vodka (plus
mixers).

I describe what's going on, the punch at Rickhouse, and where else to drink from the bowl around town. The rest is online here, and in the September issue of San Francisco Magazine.

September 2, 2009
Oakland Names Official Cocktail

… and it's the Mai Tai.

Or maybe not. (Apparently they don't fact-check the newspaper's blogs.) Instead it was official Mai Tai day in Oakland, and they're trying to get the drink recognized as the city's official cocktail.

For a debate on the origin of the Mai Tai, read this, and for Trader Vic's version (in which he says he invented the drink at his Oakland bar) read this.

September 1, 2009
Bartenders Hitting Their Hoes

For some reason, the San Francisco Chronicle didn't choose the above title for my story that comes out Sunday August 30th. I can't think of why.

More bars growing own cocktail ingredients

Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, August 28, 2009

Victoria D'Amato-Moran grows tomatoes, Asian pears, Fuji apples, blackberries, roses and many herbs in her South San Francisco garden. Sooner or later, everything in it winds up in her cocktails.

"Except the zucchinis," she says. "I haven't figured out how to use those yet."

The Bay Area has long been home to the farm-forward cocktail movement – initially personified by Scott Beattie, then of Cyrus restaurant, who sourced produce from neighbors' fruit trees for his bar. Lately, more bartenders are doing the gardening work themselves, for the same reason that backyard gardeners seem to have appeared everywhere.

The extra effort may not save money, and the drinks may not taste noticeably fresher to the customer, but you can bet they do to the proud garden tender who grew part of your gimlet from seed.

Read the rest of my story in this Sunday's Chronicle about bartenders who also tend to gardens, including Duggan McDonnell, H. Joseph Ehrmann, Daniel Hyatt, Scott Stewart, Thad Vogler, and Lane Ford, and the bars Fairway Cocktail Lounge, Cyrus, Elixir, Alembic, Cantina, Fifth Floor, Bar Agricole, Starbelly, Sprcue, Brix, and Etoile. Gosh I'm thorough.

Also: there's a recipe for Jacques Bezuidenhout's Sagerac, a version of the Sazerac made with fresh picked sage, and Scott Stewart's Lonsdale No. 3 made with fresh basil.

August 29, 2009
Does Distilled Water Freeze Clearer than Tap Water?

In my last set of icesperiments, I froze, melted, and refroze (tap) water to see if it became clearer on successive refreezings. It did not.

This time I compared tap water with distilled water to see if one would freeze more clearly than the other. I froze it, then melted and refroze it four more times. Though neither froze super clear, there were differences:

The tap water seems to freeze either clear or not clear, where the distilled water freezes in more of a bubble starburst. But in the end I'd say there's not enough of a difference to matter.

After the break, a closeup of the distilled vs. tap ice.

The icesperiments shall continue!

An index of ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

(more…)

August 28, 2009