Tag: tour

Otard Cognac Visit

Last month I took a big trip to Cognac to learn about cognac. One of the many houses I visited was Otard. This cognac house is located in the former fortifying castle of Cognac in which Francois the First was born, on the Charente River next door to Hennessy.

A tour of Otard is part castle and city history tour, and part cognac tasting. The castle dates back centuries, but my interest really begins when it was purchased by the Otard family after the French revolution.

In the basement of the building are the aging cellars. As the river is running right next to the building, the cellars have 90 percent humidity, which the cellar master likes very much.

Otard buys eau de vie from the first four delimited regions- Grande Champagne, Petite Champagne, Borderies, and Fine Bois. On this visit we were able to taste raw spirit from three of them. As noted previously, grapes from the Fine Bois produce spirit that is fruity and aromatic right off the bat, but does't age well for long periods of time. You'd could definitely taste this as a fruity, tasty grape spirit.

The raw spirit from Grande Champagne was what I'd call tight- seems like you'd want to dilute it a bit to release the aromas. This they tease out after aging in oak. The spirit from the Borderies was, as it's supposed to be, very floral like lily or violet. Many brands use Borderies spirit to add this flavor to their blends.

Otard is available in the US but not widely so. They do a lot of business at duty-free shops and in Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia.

Otard also has a release Otard 55 that San Francisco bartenders recommended I try, as it is "natural strength" at 55 percent alcohol compared with the usual 40. This could be great for mixing into cocktails, but I'm afraid I have bad news guys: This bottling is being discontinued, as they say there was too much consumer confusion about it. Maybe they should have labeled it "Bartender's Blend" instead…

October 8, 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 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