Category: wood

I have been writing a series of blog posts about cognac, and I've really been looking forward to this one about "early landed" cognac. 

This series has been detailed information about cognac production generally, and Hine cognac specifically, as I was able to ask the cellar master Eric Forget a ton of questions. It has been a fun way for me to review what I know, challenge my assumptions, and put together general production information with specifics from one brand. 

The posts in this series are: 

1. Cognac from grapes to wine. 

2. Cognac distillation and the impact of distillation on the lees.

3. Wood and barrels used for cognac.

4. Aging conditions for cognac.

5. The strange exception of early landed cognac.

6. Dilution and Additives in Cognac.

 

What the Heck is Early Landed Cognac

Early landed cognac is cognac that ages in Britain rather than in France. WHAT?? Yeah, it's weird because cognac is of course an AOC product, an Appellation d'origine contrôlée, like certain cheeses and rhum agricole and calvados and armagnac. Generally AOC products must be produced within a delimited region with a whole lot of rules for quality, and packaged in that region also. 

So for there to be an exception in the AOC for cognac to be aged elsewhere and still able to be called cognac is wild.

The expression comes from the phrase "early landed, late bottled" meaning that they land on British shores early but aren't bottled until later. (In reality all cognac is aged so it's all late-bottled.) 

To understand how this came to be, consider that a huge audience for cognac has always been Britain – and many of the cognac houses including Hine have British origins. In days before bottles were common, wine and spirits were shipped in barrels to the UK (thus beginning the tradition of scotch whisky being aged in ex-sherry barrels), and bottled there, so probably early landed cognac was once common. Today however not so much! 

But early landed cognac is a specialty of Hine – when I looked up some information about it, every single story about early landed cognac is a story about Hine in particular. Currently on the brand's website, they list vintage 1975, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1987 of early landed cognacs available for sale. 

According to the Berry Brothers & Rudd website, "This custom [or early landed] dates back to the 19th century, when they first shipped selected vintage Grande Champagne Cognacs in cask to Bristol, in England."

 

 

History of Vintage and Early Landed Cognac

Hine offers vintage cognacs – both regular and early landed versions. Vintage cognac on its own is not very common- most all cognac is a blend of ages. And in fact vintage cognac was not legal to sell for about 25 years, according to this article from 1994 in the LA Times. 

According to that LA Times story, early landed cognac was a way to sell vintage-dated cognac before it became legal again. "However, the BNIC [the cognac bureau] ruling only prohibited bottling of vintage-dated Cognac by the Cognac producers themselves. It didn’t stop the long-established practice of sending vintage-dated barrels of Cognac to England, where it was known as “early landed” Cognac. After varying periods of barrel-aging, English wine merchants would bottle this Cognac with a vintage year." 

According to this post about cognac regulations, "In 1962 single vintage cognacs were banned. A few exceptions were made: early landed cognacs (these were ageing in England) and three cognac houses who held a perfect registration and could prove the provenance regarding year and district of their eau-de-vie. These three were Croizet-Eymard, Delamain and Hine.
In 1987 this ban was lifted again."

If true (not all info on the site is accurate so I'm trying to fact-check this), that would be a pretty cool historical factoid for a couple specific brands to get an exception. 

Anyway – I mentioned that Hine offers both vintage and early landed cognacs but even better – they offer some of them from the same years so you could do taste comparison if you can get hold of them. There are vintages of both early landed and French-aged cognac from 1975, 1983, and 1985-1987. It would be amazing to taste them against each other. 

 

 

 

 

Early Landed – How Hine Does It

Early landed cognac is distilled in France and sent to England to age "shortly after distillation." I first asked questions about how Hine ages their early landed cognacs, which made me curious about how other brands do it and what the regulations are. Those are below. 

In the case of Hine, according to cellar master Eric Forget,  the cognac for early landed is not produced any differently than it is for other vintages. It remains in the UK aging for about 20 years. Hine does not own the UK warehouses – they are "bonded warehouses". ("It is a British bond," Forget says.) The aging cognac is still owned by Hine while it's overseas. 

I asked Forget if there are cellarmasters on site in England, and he replied, "We are fully in charge. The early landed just sleeps in the UK. There is no work during the time they spend there." So no manipulation is done to the cognac (transfering to different barrels, etc) – this is just a different aging environment, and then the barrels return to France afterward for bottling. 

After aging in the UK, the cognac is sent back to France where it is bottled by Hine. 

 

Early Landed Cognac Rules and Regulations

“The Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac (BNIC) is a coordination and decision-making body for the Cognac industry." I reached out to them, via their PR agency, with some questions about the legalities of early landed and boy did I learn some new stuff! My impression of how early landed cognac is legal with the AOC was totally wrong. 

Here is my email interview: 

1. Can early landed cognacs be bottled in the UK or must they return to France for bottling?
2. If not, are they still legally cognac if bottled in the UK?

In respect of Cognac product specification, as homologated by French decree n° 2015-10 of January 07, 2015, there is no mandatory bottling in the delimited area. Therefore, it is possible to bottle Cognac in the UK, as soon as long as it has been aged for a minimum of 2 years in the delimited area.

3. If they are able to be bottled in the UK are there any special regulations – maybe something on dilution or additives that's different?

Regardless of the location, bottling has to respect the same rules, inside or outside the delimited area. Any addition not expressly referred to in Cognac product specification is strictly forbidden.

4. I believe in the past that people could buy a barrel and age/bottle it in England with an independent bottler/merchant like Berry Brothers – so people could have a private barrel. Is this still the case? (the bottom of this story from 2001 mentions doing it but I'm not sure if this has changed. )

In respect of Cognac product specification, it is possible to age cognac outside the delimited area but only if ageing during the first 2 years takes place in the delimited area.

5. Or must an approved Cognac brand do the bottling?

At this stage there is no approbation of bottlers by BNIC.

6. Are there any regulations on time of aging in the UK? (Min/max time – I see a lot of mentions of 20 years but don't know if this is something official)

To be directly sold to consumers, the only regulation is that cognacs aged at least 2 years. There is no maximum limit to this ageing, whether inside or outside the delimited area.

7. Are the cellars in the UK owned by the brands or are they independent? 

It is up to the brands to decide how they want to organize the process.

 

So that's super interesting: 2 years is the minimum aging of cognac for VS, and after a cognac reaches that age it can be aged anywhere and bottled anywhere as long as it follows the rules of bottling for cognac. 

Also interesting is that most cognacs are aged in a new oak barrel for the first several months of their life (8 months at Hine), which means that the cognacs are already on their second barrel before they get sent to the UK.

This was so new and interesting to me that I emailed Hine to clarify that it was actually the case that they're aged for 2 years. A contact at Hine (I'm not positive who) responded with the following (slightly edited for clarity):

Early landed used to be aged in Bristol, they are now aged in Scotland (and have been for a decade).

In the past, when tradition was that wines, cognacs or port were sent in cask to their final destination for commerce, liquids used to be bottled by the merchant it was sold to (Berry Brothers & Rudd, Corney & Barrow, etc. ).

This has completely stopped to avoid any possible fraud or problem during bottling that could damage the liquid, and furthermore, the brand.

Early landed are aged for around 20 years in the UK, after having spent the mandatory 2 years aging in Jarnac to obtain the Cognac appellation. Our cellar masters (Eric Forget and Pierre Boyer) travel to the UK every other year to taste the barrels on site. They last visited Scotland in June 2019.

After 20 years, barrels are shipped back to Jarnac in their bonded casks to be put in demijohns. They are then bottled at Hine, on demand.

This helps explain why you don't see a lot of early landed cognac lining shelves – they're such niche products that they're only bottled when needed. (In Sacramento, the Corti Brothers store specializes in this segment.)

 

 

 

Impact of Aging Cognac in England

In the last post in this series we talked about the impact of aging in wet versus dry cellars in Cognac. Well in the case of early landed its the case of wet vs wet-and-chilly. Hine vintages in France are aged in wet cellars. Forget says, "The difference comes from the difference in humidity and a low but stable temperature in UK."

The always-wonderful Dave Broom wrote about Hine and early landed cognac in 2001. Even the title is great! "Pale beauties that thrive in the dark."

We exit from the creaking lift into a chilly, crepuscular dungeon. A greenish-grey mould covers the walls like diseased cotton wool, barrels lie apparently smothered in soot, and the floor is slippery. Hell for a homeowner, but paradise for ageing Cognac that thrives in the cold and the humidity already seeping into my bones. These conditions help give early-landed Cognac its signature style…

He pulls samples from the casks, giving me a quick history lesson on how "early landed" means the spirit arrives here before it is two years old and how, when the style was more common, wine merchants would age it in waterside bonds in London, Bristol, Liverpool and Leith… [note: we see here before the law changed it was moved from France before it was 2 years old]

The pale colour, he explains, is because the humidity allows the strength of the spirit to fall, but the cold means there is virtually no evaporation.

The Berry Brothers website continues from the above:

Nowadays, Hine still ships some of its single vintage cognacs to the UK (and is one of a very rare few estates who continue this tradition) after they have spent several months ageing in new oak barrels in Jarnac.

Cool, dark cellars house barely a hundred barrels of Early Landed (a barrel is the equivalent volume to around 350 bottles). Here the ageing conditions are quite different from those in Jarnac as the temperature is low and remains constant (between 8 and 12°C) and the high humidity level rarely drops below 95%. These factors ensure that Hine's Early Landed cognacs are particularly light and fruity with very delicate oaky notes, and delightful aromas of fresh flowers and the characteristic orange peel – very close to the cognac’s initial notes.

 

Nicholas Faith in his book Cognac describes the British palate as preferring this particular style of cognac. He writes:

This is why the brandies are lighter and mature more quickly than those which remain at home- indeed they are smooth, elegant, and delicious after a mere twenty years. This was much to the taste of old-style English connoisseurs. One of their breed, Maurice Healy, described such a cognac as 'of almost unearthly pallor and a corresponding ethereal bouquet and flavor'. By contrast they were – and -are- not overly highly rated by many French blenders, who find them flabby.

 

The low, stable temperature means there isn't a ton of wood impact on the spirit (as the light color indicates). Forget describes the taste difference of early landed cognacs, "The cognacs keep more freshness and liveliness and get this so typical orange peel nose and taste." 

 

Conclusion

Early landed cognacs could be a marvelous opportunity to make an exact comparison of the aging environment on spirits. Currently they're aging in the UK, and you could compare Hine's vintage cognacs aged in France versus those in the UK.

And since there's that new 2015 law, cognac could be aged in other parts of the world too. I hope someone is doing so already because I'd like to try it in another decade or two when it's ready. 

 

 

Note: This series of posts has been sponsored by Hotaling & Co, importers of Hine cognac. 

 

 

I'm in the middle of a series of posts about how cognac is made generally, with details from Hine cognac cellarmaster Eric Forget  about how Hine is made specifically.

Hine offers a special blend meant for mixology (H by Hine), other VSOP and XO blends, single vineyard cognacs, and many vintage-dated cognacs. 

The posts in this series are: 

1. Cognac from grapes to wine. 

2. Cognac distillation and the impact of distillation on the lees.

3. Wood and barrels used for cognac.

4. Aging conditions for cognac.

5. The strange exception of early landed cognac.

6. Dilution and Additives in Cognac.

Today's post is about aging in those barrels we discussed last time. 

I think one of the most interesting things about cognac is how its aging is not static. It does not go into a barrel and remain there until its transferred to the blending vat and bottle, unlike many (most?) spirits. 

Designation

As I'm trying to make clear with this set of blog posts, cognac is not, as many brands seem to imply, a masterwork of blending starting from a huge supply of random barrels that have been just sitting around aging without manipulation. Cognac is designed; cognac is made. 

Right off the still, cognac makers have an idea about what will become of the brandy. Of course they know where the grapes were grown and whether those areas (and those winemakers) produce eau de vie that ages well over a long time or a shorter amount of time. An initial determination is made of the new make distillate if it might go toward a VS, VSOP, XO, or even longer aged product.

According to Nicholas Faith's book Cognac (that I'll be quoting from a lot) the richness, oiliness, and sheer concentration of the spirit's flavor tells you whether it will open up over a long time or be ready to drink in a few years. 

With an idea (that will be confirmed with tastings over the years) of where the new-make spirit will end up, decisions are made about in what type of barrel it will age and in what type of warehouse and for how it will age long right off the bat, and they'll keep the liquid moving between different situations as predicted and as needed.

 

New Barrels at First

Cognac is usually put into a new barrel for a certain number of months. New barrels give up a lot of tannin, so the eau de vie is then moved to an older barrel after that.  Note that "new" doesn't necessarily never been used before, but under a certain few years old, usually three years old. 

At Hine, cellar master Eric Forget says that newly-distilled eau de vie goes into new barrels for about 8 months. He said, "in general" that eau de vie designated for older products doesn't go into older barrels sooner. 

According to the Faith book Cognac, if the year had been especially wet with a lot of rainfall, the cognacs could come out very flabby so they might age for a bit longer in new barrels; the opposite if it was a very dry year. Though it's rare, some other cognac producers only age in older barrels – that would be for marques that are destined to age a very long time.  

As cognacs age, they will likely be moved to older and older barrels, and then possibly to a glass demijohn to freeze it in time.

 

 

When To Move

Depending on the brand, every barrel is tasted annually or more often than that. Then it may be redirected into a different barrel or placed in a different cellar to attempt to bring out its best aspects. 

Aging cognac may be combined and diluted at certain intervals, and then redistributed to barrels. For example, cognac that will become an XO may be taken out the barrel, blended with other barrels in a big vat, diluted to x% ABV after 2 years, then again to a new lower ABV at 5 years, then again at bottling. (I am making these time points up but the point is that cognac can be combined, diluted, and rebarreled multiple times over its life.) 

This is a good point at which to move a parcel of aging eau de vie from its current barrels to new-to-it ones.

Barrels give up their tannins and lignins over the years, and at some point they basically become a neutral vessel, allowing the exchange of oxygen but no longer being additive. Still, different cognac houses have limits on how long they'll leave cognac in a barrel at all to prevent it from becoming overly woody. 

 

 

Different Cellars

There are different types of cellars for cognac- dry and wet. The rate of water evaporation will be impacted by the humidity of the warehouse. If it's very humid (wet cellars in basements and/or close to the Charente river) then not much water will evaporate from the barrel compared to alcohol. If it's dry, more water will also evaporate compared to alcohol. (The angels' share in cognac is generally about 1% ABV per year for the first ten years, then a slower rate after that.) 

Also, in Faith's book he writes that super dry cellars also retain a youthfulness of cognac flavor, while super wet ones will taste extra mature. I didn't check with Eric Forget of Hine, but I would assume this means that cognac designated for the premier long-aged products would more often age in the wet cellars, as maturity is highly valued. 

Forget says, that "wet cellars make rounder cognacs, versus dry, which give more liveliness." I asked him if you could tell just by tasting whether a cognac was aged in a wet or a dry cellar. He replied, " It could be only possible only if they stay a long time." 

In an extreme case over a long time, a wet-cellared cognac would lose proof in the barrel and eventually could drop below 40% ABV and no longer legally be cognac! (Before this happened it would be moved to rest in glass demijohns to prevent it.) Faith's book says that after 50 years the cognac will still be about 46% ABV, so in order to go below 40 it would really need to be extremely old. 

The great houses of Cognac are located along the Charente River not for the view, but for the access: barrels of cognac used to be floated down the river out to sea on flat-bottomed boats. For the same reason, the old cognac cellars are also located along the water. Newer ones are located away from the river, tend to be drier without the river air, and may be temperature-controlled.  

So cognac could also be moved from wet cellars to dry cellars or the reverse depending on how the barrels are aging. I do not know if this is common.  I asked Forget if barrels tend to stay where they are or are moved from one type of cellar to another. He replied there are "no fixed rules." 

Finally, I asked Forget if certain blends are made from some combination like 30 percent from wet cellars and 70 percent from dry ones, but he dismissed it. "No, tasting is the only element." 

So, at the end of the day you can choose your vineyard and your distillation parameters and your aging routine to try to make exactly the right brandy for a specific blend in the house style, but ultimately it's still up to the cellar master to redirect the liquid as it changes and to assemble the final blend from the barrels they've nurtured.

 

Stay tuned for a few more posts in this series!

 

 

Note: This series of posts has been sponsored by Hotaling & Co, importers of Hine cognac. 

  

 

At the end of 2019, I sent a list of 100 questions to the cellarmaster of Hine cognac, Eric Forget. I'm writing up what I learned over several posts.  Hine is a small (relative to the majors) cognac brand founded a bit over 250 years ago. The main house is located along the Charente River in Jarnac. Pull up your boat and have a sip. 

 

 

The posts in this series are: 

1. Cognac from grapes to wine. 

2. Cognac distillation and the impact of distillation on the lees.

3. Wood and barrels used for cognac.

4. Aging conditions for cognac.

5. The strange exception of early landed cognac.

6. Dilution and Additives in Cognac.

 

In this post, we'll cover wood and barrels used for cognac generally and Hine specifically. 

Hine buys their barrels from coopers in the Cognac region, though cellarmaster Eric Forget didn't specify if they purchase from one or multiple cooperages. (To be fair, I forgot to ask.)  Some cognac brands don't age all their cognac in their own cellars, but Hine does – with the exception of their early landed cognacs that age in England. We'll will discuss these in a future post because they're so unusual. But in any case Hine purchases those barrels as well.

 

Trees and Wood

Hine states they use "fine grain, light toast" French oak barrels. When we talk about American oak barrels for bourbon, producers might talk about the char level for them. It's rare that they speak about air vs. kiln drying and extremely rare for them to talk about oak tree terroir. It's different for cognac. 

The French cooperages follow specific instructions from each cognac brand they sell to about which type of barrels to make. Some of the parameters are the type of trees/wood used, letting the wood air-dry for a certain amount of time, and the level of toasting of the finished barrels.   

We always hear about the two french forests when it comes to barrels for wine and cognac: Troncais and Limousin (if my mapping skills are correct, they're close to each other in central France).

I asked Forget where the trees for the barrels used by Hine come from. He said, "It is a natural element, so you could find a large [parcel of forest from elsewhere] even if these two [forests – Troncais and Limousin] are the most common. But the terroir of the forest is important also. The fine grain [wood] comes from the forest north of the Loire Valley." 

 

 

According to this article with a map, the main forests for barrel wood in France are "six main French forests known for oak: Limousin, Vosges, Nevers, Bertranges, Allier, and Tronçais (a sub-section of Allier)". Only a couple of these are north of the Loire Valley (not directly north, but in Latitude). I was confused but I think I found how this can be. 

For those two main forests – Troncais wood is tighter-grained with less tannin and more lignin than that of Limousin, according to the book Cognac by Nicholas Faith. And thus it imparts less woody flavor to cognacs. So if you planned on making cognac that would age a long time, you'd choose Limousin as it still has tannins to draw out from the wood over a longer time; if VS cognac was aged in it it would be too tannic. Faith also asserts that 'Troncais' is now recognized as a style of wood rather than wood from that particular forest. 

More importantly, Faith also writes, "There are a number of forests providing wood with fine grain along the Loire – forests which have been carefully tended since before 1789 and which therefore have trees more than two hundred years old." Those sound like the forests where Hine is getting its wood.  In any case, as Forget indicated, it's a matter of the type of wood you get rather than where the trees are from. 

 

 

Toasting Barrels

The first stage of making barrels is to cut the trees into planks, and then let the planks air dry outdoors to remove harsher tannins. The rain washes the tannins out of them, leaving black streaks on the ground beneath the wood. (I've recently learned that tannins are dark and were used to make ink.) Nicholas Faith says that most makers air dry the planks for 5-6 years. 

In making barrels for French brandy (and most wine as far as I understand, but wine isn't my area of expertise) barrels are not charred as they are for bourbon; they're toasted.  So they don't get that deep black charcoal coating on the inside of the barrels but more of a, well, toast-like browning. Cognac barrels are also larger than those for bourbon – 350 liters for cognac vs 200 for bourbon.

While bourbon barrels are charred according to certain levels – char #4, etc. That terminology isn't used for cognac barrels. The char levels for bourbon relate to a certain amount of time under the flamethrower, and I'm guessing that's how they'd be designated for cognac/wine barrels as well – number of seconds near a flame but not burned by it. 

I have visited at least three cooperages – two of them in France. This tiny one that makes 4 barrels per day in the Armagnac region, and Vicard in the Cognac region that makes 60,000 barrels per year. I wrote in the latter post:

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.

 

 

The staves to make the barrels for Hine are 100% air-dried, according to Forget. While many staves for American oak barrels are kiln-dried, at least in the US. 

In the next post, I'll write about what happens when the grape spirit is put in the barrels. 

 

 

Note: This series of posts has been sponsored by Hotaling & Co, importers of Hine cognac.