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.
In this golden month of October the grape pickers are busy in the Charente, and another year's supply of cognac is in the making. The grapes hang heavy from the vine. One variety, Le Colombar, forms a stubby, two-pronged cluster. The other grape used in making cognac, called locally Le Saint-Emilion, is also known under the name of Trebbiano and Ugni Blanc. Its bunches are long and closely packed, golden-green and dripping with juice. The vines groan under their weight. There formerly was a third variety, Folic Blanche, but its use has practically died out.
All of the local population, from children to aged grand'mères, spend hours in the vineyards, clipping the bunches and filling baskets with them. The brimming baskets are dumped into hoppers, or holla, harnessed to the backs of the huskier young men of the village. The hopper weighs about 150 pounds when full. The young men carry it to a wooden art at the edge of the vineyard, climb a ladder and dump their load into one of two huge wooden tubs. Soon a lumbering (cam of oxen is pulling the tubs off to the wine press in a farm courtyard. No time is lost. By evening the juice has been pressed from the grapes, and is already in vats. The process of fermentation has already begun, the vats are gurgling, and all's right with the world.
It is a gay moment, and the vineyards resound with laughter and badinage. Almost all of the women wear a traditional, tightly drawn bonnet with projecting flaps to protect themselves from the sun. The bonnet is called a “quichenotte” and it protects them from other things as well, including the advances of bold young men. Centuries ago, when England was master of the Charente, her soldiers came up against the complexities of these sunbonnets and called them “kiss-nots,” a name which still clings to them in phonetic French.
An unwritten law allows the pickers to eat as many grapes as they wish, but the temptation is easily resisted. The grapes aren't very good to eat, despite their lustrous yellow beauty. Everyone is preserving an appetite for the festive day when the last grape is picked. Then the owner of the vineyard offers “la gerbaude,” a monumental banquet, to all his personnel. The handsomest geese in the barnyard are sacrificed for the occasion. The new wine flows freely, along with plenty of song-and the quichenottesare conspicuously absent.
These festivities are a yearly occurrence in the lives of the 23, 000 farmers who produce cognac, most of them carrying on a tradition which dates back in their families for centuries—a privilege which they guard with jealous zeal.And few agricultural pursuits lead to more headstrong individualism. This trait shows up even in the Charente farmhouse itself, half concealed among its vines and oaks. It is securely hidden behind high walls, and almost windowless to a passer-by, like a Gallo-Roman villa. Once beyond the wide central gate and into the courtyard, however, the picture is more friendly.The master's two-story house dominates the enclosure. Adjoining it are stables, lodging for the personnel, a long low shed where the cognac is stored, a wine press, and, of course, a furnace and distillery. In the middle of the court are a few trees, and perhaps an old fountain. In one corner, adjoining the furnace, is an immense pile of black blocks, each about the size of four shoe boxes. These arc briquets of pressed coal to keep the distillery going twenty-four hours a day, and they cost the farmer a pretty package of French francs.
Things buzz around the Charente farmhouse for the next fortnight. The grape juice simmers and seethes as the process of fermentation runs its course. Then one day the tanks are silent, and the grape juice has become wine. The farmer wastes no time after his wine is made. It is ready for distillation at once. The first heating turns the alcohol in the wine, as well as the nonalcoholic substances (including that cloudy suspended matter),into vapor, which emerges from the water-cooled copper serpentine coils as a clear liquid, measuring about 28 per cent alcohol, tasting very indifferent indeed, and bearing the untranslatable name of brouillis. It is by re-distilling this liquid that cognac is obtained, and here the farmer has to be on his toes. The first thin stream of liquid which emerges is too strong, and is set aside. Then comes la bonne chauffe, the good heating, and this goes directly into the cask of Limousin oak in a steady stream about the width of a baby's finger. At just the right moment, after considerable sniffing and tasting, the farmer stops the flow and draws the remainder, which is too weak, into another container. These fag ends of the process, the too-strong beginning and the too-feeble ending, are distilled once again, and come out beautifully. Residing in the casks is a lively colorless liquid whose over-all alcohol content is about 70 per cent. At this point the farmer seals his casks, lays them in long rows in his warehouse, and lets time do the rest. The aging of cognac is a mysterious process which has puzzled scientists, and the farmer doesn't try to understand it too fully. He goes about his business, aided by quite a large crew, with dispatch and confidence, using the ancient alembic still and the simple methods of his ancestors.
The French State keeps an eagle eye on every bottle of cognac from wine press to Customs Office, a supervision which may irk the farmer a bit, but which is vastly reassuring to the foreign purchaser. Just as soon as his grapes are pressed, the farmer must go to the Town Hall and declare the amount of wine he has obtained from his grapes, including the amount he keeps for family consumption, as well us his old stocks of wine. These declarations are posted in public for all his neighbors to see. If he doesn't declare his harvest, he can't ship any wine or brandy, because the Régie won't give him the necessary papers. If the farmer has a distillery, he must declare it, and ask for a permit to operate it. Then the inflexible little man in uniform unseals the still, and the farmer can go to work. But the Régie sends its men often to check on the farmer. They know exactly how much wine, how much brandy, and how much trouble the poor harassed man has at any given moment. If he falls short on his stock, he receives a large fine. If he has too much brandy, the excess can be seized. It's very annoying, but this is one of the reasons why cognac is such a reliable product.
Cognac is grown almost exclusively in the two départements of the Charente and the Charente-Maritime, new-fangled appellations fur the ancient provinces of Angoumois, Saintonge, and Aunis. Among the 23, 000-odd producers of cognac, only a few operate on a large scale, perhaps 5 per cent of them. Some growers are much more fortunately situated than others. Those who own the most barren, meager, chalk-infested soil are, by some special dispensation of nature, the luckiest. The Jurassian soil, gray and dull, peppered with chalky stones, is the same type of soil found in England and in the champagne country near Reims, but in the Charente it is distinguished by the absence of certain forms of cephalopodes and brachiopodes. That makes the big difference, together with the subtle salt breezes and the brilliant, actinic sunlight of the Charente, which brings out the best in the grapes, but never burns them. A century or so back an inquisitive old French geologist had a hunch that the quality of cognac varied inversely with the fertility of the soil. The chalkier the land the better the brandy, he figured, and he rook ten years working out a geological map to prove his point. When (he experts were called in to test his theory by exhaustive tastings, they agreed with the old gentleman completely. Since that time the Charente has been divided into areas which are far more important than mere man-made lines on a map. These are the seven sovereign districts, or growths, of Cognac, beginning at the lordly peak of La Grande Champagne and ending with the lowly ocean stretches of Bois Communs and Hois Ordinaires. The principal subdivisions are:
La Grande Champagne: This region furnishes the clearest, most delicate and refined cognac. It improves most with age, and brings the highest prices.
La Petite Champagne: The cognac from this area has the same qualities as that listed above, but to a slightly lesser degree. It shares with La Grande Champagne the honor of being labeled “Fine Champagne.”
Les Borderies: This very small area produces cognac much sought after for its individual charm, softness, and ability to age rapidly.
Les Fins Bois: These are chalky areas, not too influenced by the salty proximity of the Atlantic and the Gironde River. They yield a cognac less fine than that above, but it ages more rapidly.
Les Bons Bois: More exposed to the sea air, this area produces a cognac that is agreeable, but often thin.
Les Bois Ordinaires and Bois Communs: These take in many different areas, including the islands off La Rochelle, where the climate and sale air can be brutal.
With soil and climate to favor him, the Charente farmer needs to rely on only one other ally—time. The years transform his young elixir into smooth, delicate, amber cognac. The long rows of barrels reposing in his ehaix represent his family fortune, to be passed down from father to son. An investment in cognac is as good as gold to these people, and much better than securities or bank notes, as bitter experience has proven. But such a treasure is not accumulated without paying a price, and in cognac it amounts to almost a ransom. The robber is evaporation, and the penalty it imposes is staggering. livery day in the Charente 25, 000 bottles of cognac disappear into thin air by evaporation—a number which about equals the quantity consumed in all of France. The sun is cognac's best and most voracious customer, by far. But the penalty produces a thing of splendor in the long run.
Evaporation is not only costly, it is distinctly unbeautiful, leaving a trail of minute, blackish fungus around it. Walls and roofs of Charente farmhouses arc darkened by this smoky stain, proclaiming their activities to any passerby, and making it impossible to hide from the Régie.From an aesthetic point of view, the interior of a brandy warehouse isn't inspiring. The casks, stacked three high, are blackened with fungus too. The end of each one is a perfect blackboard for the chalk marks of the régisseur. The complete pedigree of each cask is required by the Régie—contents, age, strength.
Farmer-distillers store their precious cognac for a variable number of years, depending upon their financial reserves. Most of them cannot tie up the capital required for extensive aging, and thus the négotiants, the names famous in brandy lore, come into the picture. The négociant has the role of buyer, banker, blender, and bottler combined, and he. has kept the foreign market happy for centuries. In the old days the farmers brought samples of their brandies to the village square, where tasters from the big firms each had a favorite spot under the trees. If the sample pleased the taster, he would make an offer for a certain number of barrels. If they agreed on a price, the sale was sealed by a verbal agreement only. Nowadays the procedure is much the same, but the distiller brings his samples to the warehouses at Cognac or Jarnac and leaves them for the head taster. An oral agreement is still considered binding.
A key personality, almost a heroic one, then enters the picture. He is the Grand Master of the Warehouse, technical director and caster, and his responsibilities appear to be enormous. Tasting is the crucial point in the cognac business. and the head taster's super-educated nose and palate are the mainstay of his firm. It takes only a sniff for him to reject a bad brandy, only a taste or two to recognize the product of a country distiller which his firm will gladly buy in hundred-barrel lots. A taster must have a remarkably open mind. devoid of prejudices. He must concentrate on the one sample before him, mindful of nothing else. In Some delicate cases, where he might be influenced by the color of the sample, he tastes it in a royal-blue tulip glass which conceals the color. He uses a medium-sized tulip glass for tasting, one which fits easily in the palm of the hand, and which gives forth the right amount of fumes. With this glass filled about one-third full he gives it a few swishes, puts his nose deep in the glass, and sniffs searchingly. His nose tells him all he wants to know about the lender childhood of the brandy—its grape, its ripeness. whether it was nipped by frost, whether it was distilled too rapidly. But his palate has to judge the brandy's later years.A drop or two on his tongue, a few seconds' meditation, and he comes up with the answer—the type of brandy, quality, region, age, and most important, whether he wishes 10 buy it. He ejects the brandy discreetly, almost diffidently. into a cracboir, and is ready for the next sample. It is totally unprofessional to swallow a drop.
The responsibility of buying from samples, verifying what he has bought in a sample with what is delivered in barrels, and finally, establishing and maintaining a blend, all falls on the taster. He “marries” brandies he has selected, and delegates them to tremendous vats of Limousin oak for further aging. To this impressed layman, the head taster appeared to be nothing less than a paragon, and we wanted very much to see one of the heroic fellows in action. By good fortune we had the opportunity of talking at length with M. Raymond Filloux. head taster of one of the large cognac houses. A graying. aristocratic man in his sixties, dressed in a conservative herringbone suit, he presides in an imposing office laboratory overlooking the Charente River. He isn't a newcomer to his profession, for his father. Alfred Filloux, was one of the greatest tasters in history, and M. Filloux's fourth son. Maurice, is already-showing remarkable talent in this rare profession. A sixth generation of the Filloux family will soon take over.
M. Filloux's office is lined with a library of brandy bottles, each with a careful handwritten label. This array of bottles provides one clue to the mystery of the taster's art. Frequently comparison determines a taster's decision. M. Filloux suggested that comparison, or fasting an unknown brandy in relation to an established one, is the surest way for a novice to begin to acquire an expert's sensibility. He admits that there arc many fine points to tasting, but contends that it is no remarkable gift, and that most brandy enthusiasts can learn to be experts. On the table near the sink were the samples to be tasted that morning, some fifty of them. Some were young and colorless, some-had the wonderful chestnut stain of old age. Many of the samples were from newly delivered casks so that they could be checked with the original samples submitted. This is mere routine, it appears. because not once in three thousand times does a discrepancy occur.
We asked M. Filloux what habits he had to give up to keep his taster in shape. First of all, he admitted with a sigh, was his beloved pipe, which he hadn't touched for over a decade. Any dishes which arc strong with onions and garlic arc taboo during the week; he reserves them for Sunday. All condiments, especially mustard, are bad for his taste buds. He manages to sneak in a cigarette or two over the week end, but never the type with the strong Virginia flavor. But a good cigar—ah, that's different. In the evening after dinner he takes pleasure in a fine cigar in the company of an old cognac, as do gastronomes the world over. Most of his work is done in the morning, after a very light breakfast. He finds that tasting is easy. The maintenance of a blend is more subtle, calling all his gifts into play. One brandy ages quickly, one lends softness, another adds vitality to the blend. It is the delicate art of the taster which blends them and maintains a constant and harmonious blend throughout the years.
All of the cognac négocianss are confronted by misconceptions which they would like to dispel. No matter how often they state the fact, they can't get people to remember that cognac cannot mature in the bottle. It is not a living organism like wine, which does change in glass. Brandy takes on the gentle virtues of old age only in the oaken cask.The age of a brandy, therefore, is its age when it went into the bottle. Dusty, cobwebby, encrusted old bottles are no conclusive sign of antiquity, A seventy-year-old brandy in a bright new bottle is correct and consistent from a négotiant's point of view, but his overseas customers yearn for further signs of old age. The new type of cork, which comes out without a corkscrew, is taboo for old brandies, because the overseas buyer insists upon the ritual of pulling the cork and sniffling it critically.
The age and quality of brandies has long been indicated on the bottle by a series of stars and cryptic initials. Three stars is the classic symbol of a reliable brandy the world over. Older brandies reflect the early English influence. Following the three stars comes V.O. (Very Old), V.S.O.P. (Very Superior Old Pale), and sometimes V.V. SOP (Very Very Superior Old Pale). But where most phases of brandy have been standardized, these markings have not. Each négotiantcan go his own merry way.
The shapes of the various brandy bottles are no more standardized than the age classifications. The slender, high* hipped bottle used for the three-star classification is a fixture, but beyond this the glass containers reflect many facets of French individualism. Some are stubby flagons, others arc as slender as an Alsatian wine bottle. Some have graceful sloping shoulders and others arc distinctly fantusie, modeled after a Viking ship, for example.
There couldn't be a more agreeable moment for travelers in the Charente than this animated month of October. But very few outsiders will be on hand to watch the harvest and the hum of activity which follows it. The Charente, alas, is one of the least known and least visited parts of France, which might be all right for the garden variety of tripper, but which is a crying shame as far as the erudite readers of this magazine are concerned. To them, a visit to hospitable Cognac will prove a memorable experience. Thar word “hospitable” is used advisedly, because on every side we saw evidence of it. Over and over again the négotiants assured us that they wanted visitors to see their plants, their cbaix, and their country distilleries.
Cognac itself is a pleasant provincial town. There arc a few picturesque old houses and some nice little hillside streets. But the main attractions are the large cognac plants and their cbaix. You can just about choose your own favorite brand and find some charming gentleman to show you about the place. There is no linguistic barrier, either, for the gentry of Cognac all speak English. and usually impeccably. The one thing to remember is not to pull out a eigarette during the visit. There has never been a major lire in a Cognac warehouse, but there could be, and the potential fireworks arc staggering. The visitor will see barrels of brandy, fresh from the distillers, being poured into vats, then blended and transferred to other barrels, which are destined for long years of slumber in near-by. fungus-smudged sheds. There follows a labyrinth of enormous vats, where blends are aging, waiting to be filtered before arriving at the last vat in the line. Here it waits, until orders come in for it to be bottled. The bottling is the only highly active procedure in these silent establishments. An elaborate switchboard of silver-lined copper pipes has been contrived to bring the blends down to the bottling machines. The bottling, labeling, and finally the boxing of brandy is the last step before it is loaded on trucks on route to the four corners of the world. The names burned on these wooden cases are exciting lessons in geography—Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, Tananarive, Quebec, Caracas, Stockholm, Aden, Sydney. Wherever men are civilized or lonely, that is where cognac goes. It is an elixir treasured by eminent men also. Before the last British elections a prominent firm in Cognac received instructions from its London agents, requesting that twenty-four bottles of its finest cognac be set aside in special decanters and held for further instructions. After the elections, a second telegram was received—“Please ship the 24 bottles to Winston Churchill. 10 Downing Street. London.” The British Prime Minister could wish for no better gift to celebrate his victory.
The great names of cognac aren't assertive in their own city, for some strange reason. More than one visitor has arrived expectantly, wandered around a bit, and then asked in perplexity, “But where are the brandy houses?” They may be emblazoned in neon splendor in Piccadilly Circus and the place de I'Opéra but they are very coy in Cognac, and almost invisible. This extraordinary reticence is a form of good manners, one supposes, and the visitor is advised to consult the nearest policeman, café keeper, or best of all, the Bureau National du Cognac, on a little side street just south of the place François Prenier, if he wishes to find a famous brandy house. This anonymity is difficult to explain, but it is not to hide from visitors. Everywhere we went we received the same assurance—the latchstring is out to interested pilgrims to the shrine of Cognac brandy.