New tour offers a taste of Cognac’s traditions

It’s surprising how easy it is to open a barrel of prized brandy. Cognac maker Roger Prisset stands in his storehouse next to a barrel promisingly chalked up “1962”, and lifts off the wooden stopper with one hand – a tenth of the effort you’d need to uncork a weeknight wine. He sticks his nose as far as it will go into the barrel, then encourages our little party of cognac tourists, shivering in the damp November chill, to do the same. An instantly warming vapour of sweet, deep honey and cigars shoots into the head.

Prisset does not want an airtight seal: cognac needs to breathe through its oak cask to take on the colour and flavour of the wood. The 1962 smells good but then, he admits, it was an uncommonly good year, and anyway not something he can take credit for. This vintage was made by his father, who like his grandfather, was a cognac master. For really good cognac, you have to wait. In all there are about 4,000 producers of France’s famous spirit but more than 90 per cent of what they make is tankered away for blending at the “big four” cognac houses – Rémy Martin, Hennessy, Courvoisier and Martell. These powerful businesses have successfully chased new markets in the Americas, Singapore and China, pushing global sales of cognac to around €2.35bn last year, according to the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac. What the independents keep behind, they sell under their own labels, taking a tiny 2 per cent of the market. I’m here to try a new weekend tour of independent cognac makers such as Prisset, something started this month by Nick Brimblecombe, an Englishman who runs the Logis du Paradis, a boutique hotel 20km south of the town of Cognac. It’s surrounded by Grande Champagne, an area of villages and valleys that is the premier cru, the most prestigious, in the Cognac region.