COGNAC

This is the third and final part of our trip to France in 2019.  Part 1 was to champagne country, Part 2 Bordeaux, and this Part 3 to Cognac, which is both a town (250 miles southwest of Paris) and the highest form of brandy.  All bottles labeled Cognac are produced from grapes grown in this location.  The population of Cognac is around 19,000, but was as high at 22,000 in 1975.

We only stayed two nights in Cognac, at what was then a new Chais Monnet, one of the very finest hotels we have ever experienced. 

• Virtually adjacent are the grand four cognac companies, Martel, Hennessey, Courvoisier and Rémy Martin.  I picked this hotel because Rémy Martin is just across the street, where we had made a special appointment to get a private tour.  These four make 93% of all the cognac drunk.  
• We arrived by train.  Every major train station has a taxi stand, right?  Nope.  We waited for 15 minutes, and finally got someone to call the hotel to pick us up.
• I should mention that this was the fourth day in row of clear blue skies.  The train station beyond the flag.

• 
  About our the Chais Monnet.

....we were stunned with this spectacle that mystifyingly is a hotel.  It only opened last year and their restaurants are now one month old.  It took an actual tour for a staff member to walk us to our room, for the place is spread out and everything is impressively high tech.  Remy Martin is a three-minute walk away, while Martell and Hennessey are viewable from our room.

• 
  We had a truly wonderful dinner with a Bordeaux that was 100% Merlot.  
• The sweetbreads were spectacular.  These are the thymus and/or pancreas gland of young calves or lambs.
• Next, a foie gras collection (right).

• Lunch the next day was at Le Coq d'Or.  
• Foie gras with a Rose wine to start.

• Then the best duck meal I've ever had.  Most of these dishes are doused with some kind of sauce.  This one was just grilled with a little salt.  Came with a Bordeaux.

• 
  Rémy Martin was founded in 1724, and their VSOP (Very Superior Old Pale, $40) is the best selling "common" cognac sold in the world.   
• The XO (Extra Old, $200) is a blend of wines (from which cognac is distilled) from 400 different producers.  
• They have 10 different grades, topped by their Louis XIII, which is in the range of $4000-$5000/bottle, if not more.  Every so often, sold at Costco for less.

• 
  White grapes are made into wine, which is distilled and aged to become cognac.
• The grape is Ugni Blanc (Trebbiano in Italy), with smaller amounts of Colombard and Folle Blanche.
• The confusion is the term champagne, which in Cognac is not a bubbly wine, but instead, countryside zones.

• Then the best tasting we have ever had in our life.

• 
  Margot, our guide, first sat us down for a first taste of the Louis XIII, with an appetizer of goose foie gras paté topped with duck, plus a chocolate pastry.  We were coached that for cognac, do not swirl, although you can gently circle the liquid in a tilted glass.  She explained that the Ugni Blanc wine is distilled, and the distillate distilled a second time.  

• Note that the glass is not roundish.

• 
  Then she took us on a special Louis the Thirteen tour, entering a  special area where we couldn't take photos.  She opened a new keg at the top, and using a pipette, sucked out 10 ounces of this expensive cognac.  Two ounces for her and four ounces for each for us. Just this amount of cognac from a 24 ounce $4500 bottle would have cost $1875.  And remember that we had already begun a tasting with at least an earlier ounce or so.  We sipped on this opulent potion during the tour.

• 
  She then got a key to open a special door, and said that this room was visited only 13 times/year, and we were being specially honored.  Why?  Search me.  Maybe because we gave her a box of macadamia nut candy.

• 
  This room protected all their original products of historical significance.
• Had Jeroboams (to the right) and Methuselahs of Louis XIII cognac.
• At the end, we glanced at a bottle of Louis XIII magnum.  Three had just been sold at a charity auction in Hong Kong for $558,000, supposedly a record sale.

To close, who really drinks cognac today?

• If you want to read a scientific paper about cognac consumption, click here.

• 
  97% of all produced cognac are exported.
• Trump doesn't drink, but perhaps Xi Jinping does.  President Emmanuel Macron gave Xi a bottle of Louis XIII.
• The two leading markets are the USA and China, with Singapore in there somewhere, but mostly to re-ship to China.

• 
  Most cognac is imbibed neat, without ice.
• Cognac represents success and luxury.
• In China, cognac is mostly consumed during a meal, and usually at a lavish dinner for special occasions.  The population is so large that just a small percentage amounts to huge volume.  There is also much gift-giving in this sector of their society.  Cognac connotes conspicuous consumption and modernity.
• 
  Not so for the U.S., where personal gratification dominates.  While cognac has been drunk in the U.S. for centuries, a shift has occurred.
• Once the domain of older, affluent whites.

• 
  Since the 1990s, black entrepreneurs appeared, and today the large majority of American cognac drinkers are Black.
• A catalyst was the success of hip-hop singers.  Several songs are titled with Courvoisier and Hennessey.  Rap musicians and their fans now also mix cognac with fruit juice and other liquids, and they do use those roundish snifter glasses. 

• 
  Click on this, and view the six best rap videos about Hennessey.  Or Busta Rhymes and Pass the Courvoisier.
• And, yes, Trump's tariffs are affecting cognac sales.

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