Hamish Champ: Cognac, the Water Of Life

By Hamish Champ

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Courvoisier English-language films

Thanks to those good people of Courvoisier I've been recently able to experience how the stuff of Napoleon gets made - and in its own backyard. True,...

Thanks to those good people of Courvoisier I've been recently able to experience how the stuff of Napoleon gets made - and in its own backyard.

True, it meant a bit of sacrifice; combining holidays with what passes for work never goes down well with the family, but hey, sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, and besides, sometimes it doesn't feel like work at all.

And since a bunch of us, including a licensee friend of mine, were holidaying on the west coast of France it was easy to take up the offer of a guided tour around Courvoisier's operation in the town of Jarnac, quite near where we were all staying on the Isle de Ré.

Having negotiated a 24-hour pass with our respective other halves - and after promising to look after the kids for a whole day​ on our return - three mates and I found ourselves quaffing amber-coloured cognac in Chateau Courvoisier's special cellar, aptly named 'Paradis'.

This was an absolute treat, even if I wasn't​ allowed to sample the 70 per cent proof Eau de Vie, likely as not for health reasons. But one of the real highlights - alongside visiting a number of Courvoisier's storage cellars, redolent with the odours of ageing liquor - was seeing how the barrels that hold the ageing spirit are made.

Once selected by Courvoisier's master blender from special state-owned oak forests, the mightiest trees are felled, stored for ages, before being cut into barrel-sized sections, and then split with a bloody great splitting… thing. The split bits are then cut into staves and stored for another few years, before being assembled into the barrels we're so familiar with.

Yes, I know it doesn't sound exactly riveting, but it was. We were blown away by the skills involved, everything from the aforementioned splitting activity to the precise cutting, measuring and shaping goings-on; it was all astounding to watch. Believe me, when you tap into a keyboard for a living you learn to appreciate stuff like this.

What also amazed us was the way these guys were working without very much in the way of safety equipment. A pair of gloves here, a set of earplugs there, but of a fluorescent jacket or industrial strength ear defenders there was no sign. Hot, noisy, potentially limb-threatening, it would be enough to make a UK Health & Safety Executive officer partake of a coronary.

The next day we returned to the Isle de Ré, and after a lovely meal in a waterfront restaurant we decided to round the evening off with a cognac, and a Courvoisier one at that. The establishment's patron claimed he'd never heard of it, which we decided was rather bizarre, given that it's made virtually just down the road.

Perhaps they don't like Jarnac's most famous export. Perhaps, since Isle de Ré produces its own cognac, they don't like the competition. Either way, they don't know what they're missing...

Related topics Spirits & Cocktails

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