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French Cognac For Angels
I’m imagining it’s probable you’ve never heard of French Cognac For Angels. If so, lucky you for stopping by. Because DA BG’s fellow scribbler Alex Vargara is now going to complete your Cognac Angel Education:
“Fueled by a growing middle class with a voracious appetite for aspirational products, Asia, including developing markets like Vietnam and the Philippines, is beginning to develop a taste for cognac.
Apart from China, Vietnam has been leading the way in cognac consumption, even surpassing Japan recently.
Although the Philippines doesn’t have a long tradition of cognac drinking like former French colony Vietnam probably does, Filipinos have always been a big market for the cheaper Spanish brandies, which, like cognac, belongs to the family of so-called “brown spirits.”
As the Philippine economy continues to grow, more Filipinos are likely to level up in their drinking preferences. The market is bound to be flooded with so many options, both imitations and the genuine article. It pays to know your cognac in order to get your money’s worth.
Centuries-old tradition
OAK barrels in the founder’s cellar contain cognacs that date back to the 1850s.
Anyone can claim to make cognac, but under a century-old French law, only distillers based in France’s Cognac region have the right to call their double-distilled spirits stored for a time in oak barrels (thus, the brown hue) “cognac.” Companies based elsewhere, whether within or outside France, which still publicly insist on marketing their products as cognac, are guilty of misrepresentation, and can be hailed to court.
There’s a similar law that’s in effect in Champagne, another region north of Paris. Only those based in Champagne can call their sparkling wine, well, champagne. Others can settle for “bubbly” or whatever their marketing arm could think of (we’ll focus on Champagne next time).
Foreigners may dismiss such a law as frivolous, but not the French who take their centuries-old wine-making tradition seriously, and rightly so. We soon understood why after separate trips to Cognac, located southwest of Paris and adjacent to Burgundy, and, a few days later, to Champagne, with Olga Azarcon, the Philippines’ country manager for Moët Hennessy.
Moët et Chandon produces champagne, while Hennessy is into cognac. The two companies became partners in 1971 to form Moët Hennessy. In 1987, Moët Hennessy joined the Louis Vuitton group of Bernard Arnault to become part of LVMH, the world’s biggest grouping of luxury brands.
From the more affordable VS, XO and VSOP, to the top of the line Paradis and Paradis Imperial, Hennessy has something to offer the discriminating client depending on his preference, current mood and even budget.
More than 250 years since Richard Hennessy, the company’s Irish founder, set sail to France from Ireland to establish the business, the house of Hennessy has grown to become a global brand. (A bottle of limited-edition Hennessy cognac named after him costs around P150,000.) To this day, the company is still partly owned by his descendants.
Balanced demand
COCHET, the author, Anna Sobrepeña, Moët Hennessy country manager in the Philippines Olga Azarcon and Tanya Lara inside Hennessy’s distillery in Cognac
One of them is Frenchman Maurice Hennessy, a member of the eighth generation, who, with his disarming ways and quaint British accent (he spent some time in England), is an ideal brand ambassador.
“The great thing about demand for Hennessy is it’s evenly balanced between the US, Asia and Europe, particularly Russia,” said Hennessy. “Even parts of Africa like Nigeria are doing well. But I won’t lie to you. China is very important, and so is the US where we sell more cognac (than in France). If I’m going somewhere, it’s because that market is important. They don’t send me to markets where they don’t drink at all like Saudi Arabia or Libya. At least, not yet.”
Maurice Hennessy, a trained agronomist, is also one of 1,400 growers who supply Hennessy with grapes. Only white wine produced from white grapes will do, as red wine is too robust and considered coarse and inelegant for cognac production. The company’s 200 hectares of land planted to grapes, which function more as a showcase that sets the standards for suppliers to follow, barely cover one percent of its needs.
Together with the articulate and equally witty Jean-Michel Cochet, Hennessy’s official “ambassadeur de maison,” and Renaud de Gironde, a member of the company’s tasting committee, the three men gave us a series of interviews and a two-day tour of Hennessy’s facilities sometime in May, including its postcard-pretty distillery, antiseptic tasting room and centuries-old “founder’s” cellar, where certain oak barrels of cognac vintages date back to the mid-19th century.
One of the keys to a good cognac is consistency. And you can get that only by producing the right blend composed of various vintages. Tasting various cognacs to know what to store, what to use, and at what amounts has kept Gironde and his colleagues, led by Hennessy’s master blender, busy every day for at least one hour (see sidebar).
“All Hennessy cognac is the result of a long blending process,” said Cochet. “By properly blending different elements, you create the desired style and character, which customers have grown to know and are looking for. The same taste profile and enjoyment should be duplicated despite the fact that components are never the same.”
Quality ‘eau de vie’
HENNESSY cognac mixed with cranberry juice
And it all begins with distilling quality eau de vie (water of life) from white wine pressed from grapes grown and harvested within the region. When it finally emerges from the double-distillation process, eau de vie is as crystal-clear as water. The time spent in oak barrels will create its transformation, from the taste down to its color.
“Older oak barrels would give less woody element,” said Cochet. “Younger oak barrels would produce stronger, darker cognac. Since these barrels are new, they would release more oak component in terms of taste and color.”
Except for harvesting grapes with machines, the entire process has remained basically the same as the family’s ancestors did it hundreds of years ago. Cochet even suspects that the process of distillation originated from the Arabs long before huge parts of the Middle East became Muslim.
“When you’re drinking a good glass of wine, you’re not enjoying the water,” he said to illustrate the importance of distillation. “Otherwise, why would you spend so much money when mineral water is much cheaper? What you’re enjoying is the remaining 12 percent, which is basically alcohol. It gives the wine components, structure and elements that leave it with a nice aroma.”
As Cochet explained it, the distiller consists of a steel head and “swan’s neck”-like pipe, which coils all the way to the back and into a big cylinder that functions as the condenser, which comes with a funnel from which the first and second flows come out.
Three parts
The boiler or steel head is filled with 2,000 liters of white wine, which is boiled slowly by gas-fired open flame. The process can’t be rushed since evaporation involves only the most volatile part of the white wine, the alcoholic part, which also carries the aroma. Since the heat is regulated, water won’t evaporate with the alcohol.
As the steam slowly rises, it is channeled into a condenser with a coiling pipe drenched in cold running water. Due to the change in temperature, the steam eventually turns into liquid form composed of three parts: head, heart and tail.
“The head, as it name implies, is heady,” said Cochet. “Its aroma is too strong so we separate it. What we get is the second part, the heart, which is what we need. Then comes the watery part called the tail. It’s not pleasant, either, so we separate it.”
The head and tail are collected separately and “rechanneled” back to the next batch of wine to be distilled. The watery part of the wine that’s left in the boiler is sent to a nearby plant to be converted into biogas.
Only the heart or “brouilli” (pronounced as boyie), which consists of 30 percent of the condensed steam, undergoes a second distillation following the initial procedure. Again, only the second distillation’s heart part, now known as eau de vie, is kept for eventual aging.
Everything is monitored manually based on parameters set by the master distiller. Normally, after an hour and 15-20 minutes, the first flow arrives. Based on the flow’s temperature and alcohol content, the one manning the process would know when the heart part is coming and when it’s about to end.
“Here at Hennessy, we distill wines coming from the 200 hectares belonging to us,” said Cochet. “We do a craft distillation, which is a system we use for small batches of distillation.”
Read more HERE.
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The DSK Blackberry Mystery
The DSK BlackBerry Mystery has not been solved. And, odds are, it never will be. Which is sad, because it’s one of the best. And who doesn’t love a good mystery now and then? (hint : DA BG do!)
Practically no-body, if we believe the statistics. (Those figures that never lie, except when quoted/created by politicians.) They tell us we love mysteries so much, that the No. 2 best selling Fiction Author of all time is……wait for it….Agatha Christie! Second only to another crumpet-chomper named “Shakespeare.”
Alrighty then – with that fascinating factoid under our literary belts, let’s get back to the Mystery of DSK’s Blackberry.
You’ll no doubt recall that it was a large(not white) lie by a Sofitel employee that the missing phone had been found, that enabled New York’s finest to snag the great seducer at the airport.
But, beyond that, and the fact that DSK called his Daughter, asking her to return to their luncheon resturant to search for it, the disappearance of DSK’ s Blackberry remains a mystery tightly wrapped in an enigma or three.
My fellow scribblers Edward Epstein and Paolo Passeri attempt to unwrap it for us:
“The account of Mr. Epstein tells that, the morning of May, the 14th, DSK had received a text message from Paris from a woman friend temporarily working as a researcher at the Paris offices of the UMP, Sarkozy’s political party. The message warned him that at least one private e-mail he had recently sent from his BlackBerry to his wife, had been read at the UMP offices in Paris. It is unclear how the UMP offices might have received this e-mail, but if it had come from his IMF BlackBerry, he had reason to suspect he might be under electronic surveillance in New York.
At 10:07 AM he called his wife in Paris on his IMF BlackBerry, telling her of his problem. He asked her to contact a friend who could arrange to have both his BlackBerry and iPad examined by an expert. An exam that would never happen for his Blackberry…
The call records show that DSK used his IMF BlackBerry for the last time at 12:13 PM to tell his Daughter Camille he would be late for lunch. This happened approximately 7 minutes after the maiden entered his room, which occurred at 12:06 PM according to Hotel key records, and most of all after the controversial encounter, likely occurred in this Time Interval, which is still a matter of dispute.
DSK realized his IMF BlackBerry was missing only nearly two hours later, at 14:15 PMwhile going to the Airport in taxi. At the beginning he believed he had left the cellphone to the Restaurant and immediately called his daughter (with a spare mobile phone) asking her to go back there for a check. The footage at the Restaurant shows that she effectively went there looking for the lost object. Of course she was not able to find it and at 14:28 PM she sent him a message indicating she could not find it.
At 15:01 PM, while approaching the airport, DSK was still attempting to find his missing phone, calling it from his spare with no answer. According to the records of the BlackBerry company, the IMF device had been disabled at 12:51 PM.
At 15:29 PM, he called the hotel from the taxi, indicating his room number and giving a phone number, so that he could be called back, in case his phone was found.
Thirteen minutes later he was called back from a hotel employee who was in the presence of a police detective. The hotel employee falsely told him that his phone had been found and asked where it could be delivered. DSK told him that he was at JFK Airport and that he had a problem since his flight left at 4:26 PM. He was reassured that someone could bring it to the airport in time, so he gave her the Gate and Flight number which allowed the police to call DSK off the plane and take him into custody at 4:45 PM.”
Read More HERE
THROW ME A BONE HERE, PEOPLE!
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French Country Travel Life Wino
French Country Travel Life is full of Winos. The “drinking it “variety and the “makin’ it” kind. As you travel through the French Country backroads, you get the impression there just might be more winemakers than wine drinkers! I can tell ya DA BG does.
But, whatever the reality, it’s safe to say that regardless of your choice of French Wine – red, white, rose, and any/all variations of – there’s a (for me, HAPPY!) over abundance. And you don’t need anyFrench Language Lessons or French Sentences and Phrases to get the most out of it
Naturally, it’s the French Wine Regions that are the most widely known that first come to mind. The Loire – celebrated for it’s elegant, mineral packed whites, the Pouilly Fumes and the Savignon Blancs. As well as the pinnacle of the Gamay grape – Touraine. But wait – there’s more! – the earthy nuances of Cabernet Franc proudly exhibited in Chinon and Bourgueil.
Plus – the Loire offers one of the richest histories of all the French regions, due to the fact that it was the home/vacation spot for a majority of the Kings of France. Meaning – an (again) over abundance of some of the greatest
Treasures of France – such as Chennonceau,Chambord and Amboise. (where Leonardo di Vinci spent his last years)
So, before you start thinking French Tourism is paying me for all this – remember that virtually every region of France has some incredible wines to offer.
One region that is low on the radar’s of most non-French is the Quincy. (pronounced -“Can-See”) It starts just below the city of Verizon, (just before the Loire curves right toward Bourges) and borders on the Cher region to the East. Here some of the tastiest, and little discovered Savignon Blancs(“Savignon Fume” in France) can be found.
One of the Quincy Wino “posse” is Phillipe Portier. This is a slice of his life. Bonne degustation! (good tasting)
