Cognac

The Charente is a rolling patch of French countryside just north of Bordeaux where the actinic quality of the sunlight is extraordinary, and where the majority of rural postmen have liver trouble. This is perhaps a bizarre statement, but it may contain the key to two apparently unrelated phenomena—the unique quality of Cognac brandy and the slowness of the French mails. Why, you have every right to ask, does the Charente postman have liver trouble? Because, during his daily rounds, a good many of his friends offer him a glass of local white wine. Being a genial fellow, he usually accepts. The trouble is it isn't very good wine. It is fairly fragrant, but inclined to be tart and cloudy. Taken at the postman's steady pace, that isn't at all good for the foie.

Luckily for the world, somebody discovered about three centuries ago that this same dry, cloudy wine, when put through the process of distillation, became a thing of unexpected splendor. Its tartness disappeared, and the liability of its suspended matter became an asset. Ten bottles of mediocre wine became one bottle of a fragrant phenomenon called cognac, appreciated for centuries throughout the civilized world as the best of all brandies.

The story of cognac comes fairly late in the history of distillation, which, as any alert student of hieroglyphics will tell you, goes back at least as far as the Egyptians.

The inspired fellow who first thought of distilling wine is nameless, alas, but the record shows that wine was being put through this process in the early 1600's, resulting in an cau-de-vie, an elixir of life called “ardent water,” still a rather good term. But, to judge by early documents, the taste was ghostly. To disguise the offending odors the distillers began to flavor their elixir with clove, carnation, anise, and juniper. To romanticize its appeal, they gave it such seductive names as Eau Nuptiale, Belle de Nuit, Huilo do Vénus, and Parfait Amour, thus antedating the sultry titles of modern perfumes by a good three centuries. The precise nature of the distilling apparatus was kept a dark and mysterious secret, but it was actually nothing more than the ancient alembic still, originated by the Greeks and used by alchemists in the Middle Ages.

The inhabitants of the Charente were late, indeed almost reluctant, to enter the field of distillation. For centuries their economic fortune had rested upon another commodity —salt. Salt, as we know, is available to anyone who lives near sea water. But the Danes and English and Normens would have none of it. Instead they sent their sailing vessels to the ancient province of Saintonge to obtain the salt mined there, for it was considered the best in the world. As they loaded their ships on the banks of the Charente River, the sailors took along a few barrels of local wine as well. It wasn't very good wine, and didn't travel well, but it gained a certain acceptance in the wine-starved regions of the North.

Then something happened, and here, as is often the case, the historians don't quite agree. It seems, according to one-source, that the vintners of Charente, suffering from religious wars at home and burdensome taxes abroad. decided to distill their wine to cut down expensive cargo space. The English could add water at the other end.

The first results amazed everyone, and delighted the customers overseas. This elixir of life, unlike earlier distillations. did not have foul odors and needed no disguise—it was clean and fragrant. “Ardent water” was an immediate commercial success and in a few years outstripped salt as a Charente export.

By the eighteenth century cognac had become a booming business. It was advertised as “brand wine” in England, an expression which soon became “brandy” in the pubs, where, mixed with water, it rapidly became as popular a drink as beer. Brändvin—“burnt wine,” referring to the use of heat in distillation-was soon a Scandinavian favorite too.

About this time the good people of Cognac began to notice that the colorless brandy which had remained unsold did not deteriorate in the oaken cask but, quite the contrary, improved in quality. It mysteriously acquired a softer taste, a subtle bouquet, and a lovely amber tint. The technique of aging brandy began then and there, and the colorless product from the still was destined for another chapter in its life.

This new chapter in the making of cognac concerned oak, the rather porous, fragrant oak from the forests of Tronçais in the neighboring province of Limousin. This inland parcel of land, which was famous for its fine carriages (the word “limousine” is no accident), still supplies cognac with the oak for its barrels. Other woods have been tried, and other oaks—French, American, German, Russian—but they have proven unsatisfactory. Fine old American oak, the pride of Grand Rapids, lends a bitterness to cognac, I am grieved to report. Only the Limousin oak is porous to the proper degree to allow the cognac to breathe a little oxygen throughout its long years of imprisonment. Only this wood has the subtle tannins and aromatic resins required, and is willing to yield them to the brandy which it imprisons.