Cognac day 1/2 - Hine, BNIC, Frapin, Rémy Martin
23-Sep-08 - Evening visit to Hine Cognac in Jarnac, right by the river Charentes. I went there about 12 years ago with Jill and we had an excellent tasting with Bernard Hine himself. He is, apparently, retired but still pops in now and again to make sure that they're still doing it 'his' way. Interestingly, Hine now belongs to the Angostura Group, and before that was a member of LVMH, but Bernard was still firmly in control in spite of the fact that the family has had no equity in the company for yonks. Anyway, the 'tasting' was conducted by Eric Forget, the cellarmaster, and consisted of nothing more than a 'nosing' of eight or nine Cognacs, including two examples of the vintage 1978, one aged in Jarnac and the other in Bristol. The latter is shipped back to Jarnac for bottling and showed very different characteristics from the one aged in Jarnac. This was an interesting comparison and, of course, 'nosing' is how the professionals make up the blends, but it was nevertheless disappointing not to taste the Cognacs. We had dinner in the directors' dining room: two cheese soufflés with 2002 Saint-Aubin 1er Cru Le Charmois Pinot Noir, Michel Picard (big, classic); and sliced duck-breast with a rosti of potatoes and sliced apple, followed by cheese (including the swiss Emmental), this last served with 2003 Château de Castres, Graves (elegant, spicy). We finished up with tiramisú (fab) served with Hine Antique (even fabber) and were actually allowed to drink it, this time.
Eric Forget in the Hine blending room. (Pic: Roshna Ahmad)
24-Sep-08 - Visit to the BNIC offices in Cognac itself: very grand and with a large conference room. We had a presentation from Jérôme Durand, Director of Marketing and Communication, who ran us through the background (history, geography, geology, etc.) of Cognac very expertly. In front of us were five tasting samples, two of the newly-distilled spirit and the other three 5, 10, and 15-year-old samples of the generic Cognac. Sadly, we were to sit through a further two hours of repetition during a second presentation which did little more than cover the same ground as the first, at tedious speed. Janet Burns, who had organised the trip, tried valiantly to remind the presenter that we did have further appointments that day and time was short, but to no avail. We finally got to the tasting at 11:15, on a visit scheduled to end at 11:30. The tasting was extremely useful and came with the first lesson of Cognac: ageing is not everything.
We were, inevitably half an hour late for our next visit, which was Cognac Frapin, but very well worth the trip on its own. The tasting/blending room is floor-to-ceiling bottles of Cognac and our host, Olivier Paultes, talked us through most of the range. The Cognacs were sublime, and I was reminded of Easter Sunday, 2002 when we were staying in a hotel in St.-Tropez and had lunch at Michel Roux's country house. He cooked, we drank 1985 claret and, after the meal, Frapin Cognac. There were two other guests there (names escape me, unfortunately) and we all remarked that this was probably the best Cognac we'd ever tasted. All I can remember about the presentation was that it came in a moon flask with what appeared to be a handwritten 'electric pencil' inscription. I asked Olivier what it was, and he replied "it is a special blend we make for Michel. We have several customers who come to taste and select a particular style." I asked how many bottles you have to order to get your own blend and he was rather cagey, but I got the impression that this is one of those questions (like the fuel-consumption of a Rolls-Royce) which, if you have to ask, you can't afford it.
Lunch was at Château Fontpinot, a magnificent pile out amongst the vineyards, and hosted by Max Cointreau (of that ilk) who married Mlle Frapin thus conjoining two of Aquitaine's foremost distilling families. I had to leave during lunch, having had an urgent call from YC! to file an article (on restaurant wine-lists) by 5:00 pm (it was press-day), and so took a cab back to the hotel, filed the article at one minute to five, and went down to the bar for an extremely large Four Roses at five o'clock, when we were supposed to depart for the next visit. Needless to say, no-one else had returned and I had the bar to myself for the better part of an hour before my colleagues returned, to dash upstairs, wash, change and come down again fifteen minutes later.
We left for Rémy Martin eventually, fetching up at their very glamorous complex in Cognac itself, and meeting up with two other groups of journalists, one from Germany and one from the USA. After the tour we trundled off to the Rémy 'Club' for a short exercise of food-matching. This was an interesting idea, but I felt that it really didn't come off. We had the VSOP with a goat's cheese canapé on a kind of chewy crouton. Both brandy and canapé were delicious, but whether it was a food match is something of a moot point. Then we had the XO Excellence with a chocolate macaroon. Again, both were delicious, but I didn't really feel that there was any point of contact. I don't think that Cognac is really for food... Or, indeed for cocktails. We were presented with a new cocktail created by their own mixologist which featured watermelon juice and VSOP. Most of us finished about half of it - 'a waste of good Cognac' I wrote in my notes.
Dinner was excellent: roast maigre with truffled pastry and a velouté of girolles with St.-Esprit, Maison des Maines 2005. This is a Vin de Pays des Charentes and quite astonishing in its quality. I've always found the local wines in the Cognac area to be a bit bland and nondescript, but this had some real class and character, with Sauvignon freshness. The main course was a pastilla of pigeon with a superb Château de Malleret 1996: although we're quite a way from Bordeaux, the taste in these parts is very much for claret.
Eric Forget in the Hine blending room. (Pic: Roshna Ahmad)24-Sep-08 - Visit to the BNIC offices in Cognac itself: very grand and with a large conference room. We had a presentation from Jérôme Durand, Director of Marketing and Communication, who ran us through the background (history, geography, geology, etc.) of Cognac very expertly. In front of us were five tasting samples, two of the newly-distilled spirit and the other three 5, 10, and 15-year-old samples of the generic Cognac. Sadly, we were to sit through a further two hours of repetition during a second presentation which did little more than cover the same ground as the first, at tedious speed. Janet Burns, who had organised the trip, tried valiantly to remind the presenter that we did have further appointments that day and time was short, but to no avail. We finally got to the tasting at 11:15, on a visit scheduled to end at 11:30. The tasting was extremely useful and came with the first lesson of Cognac: ageing is not everything.
We were, inevitably half an hour late for our next visit, which was Cognac Frapin, but very well worth the trip on its own. The tasting/blending room is floor-to-ceiling bottles of Cognac and our host, Olivier Paultes, talked us through most of the range. The Cognacs were sublime, and I was reminded of Easter Sunday, 2002 when we were staying in a hotel in St.-Tropez and had lunch at Michel Roux's country house. He cooked, we drank 1985 claret and, after the meal, Frapin Cognac. There were two other guests there (names escape me, unfortunately) and we all remarked that this was probably the best Cognac we'd ever tasted. All I can remember about the presentation was that it came in a moon flask with what appeared to be a handwritten 'electric pencil' inscription. I asked Olivier what it was, and he replied "it is a special blend we make for Michel. We have several customers who come to taste and select a particular style." I asked how many bottles you have to order to get your own blend and he was rather cagey, but I got the impression that this is one of those questions (like the fuel-consumption of a Rolls-Royce) which, if you have to ask, you can't afford it.
Lunch was at Château Fontpinot, a magnificent pile out amongst the vineyards, and hosted by Max Cointreau (of that ilk) who married Mlle Frapin thus conjoining two of Aquitaine's foremost distilling families. I had to leave during lunch, having had an urgent call from YC! to file an article (on restaurant wine-lists) by 5:00 pm (it was press-day), and so took a cab back to the hotel, filed the article at one minute to five, and went down to the bar for an extremely large Four Roses at five o'clock, when we were supposed to depart for the next visit. Needless to say, no-one else had returned and I had the bar to myself for the better part of an hour before my colleagues returned, to dash upstairs, wash, change and come down again fifteen minutes later.
Château Fontpinot (pic: Roshna Ahmad)
We left for Rémy Martin eventually, fetching up at their very glamorous complex in Cognac itself, and meeting up with two other groups of journalists, one from Germany and one from the USA. After the tour we trundled off to the Rémy 'Club' for a short exercise of food-matching. This was an interesting idea, but I felt that it really didn't come off. We had the VSOP with a goat's cheese canapé on a kind of chewy crouton. Both brandy and canapé were delicious, but whether it was a food match is something of a moot point. Then we had the XO Excellence with a chocolate macaroon. Again, both were delicious, but I didn't really feel that there was any point of contact. I don't think that Cognac is really for food... Or, indeed for cocktails. We were presented with a new cocktail created by their own mixologist which featured watermelon juice and VSOP. Most of us finished about half of it - 'a waste of good Cognac' I wrote in my notes.
Dinner was excellent: roast maigre with truffled pastry and a velouté of girolles with St.-Esprit, Maison des Maines 2005. This is a Vin de Pays des Charentes and quite astonishing in its quality. I've always found the local wines in the Cognac area to be a bit bland and nondescript, but this had some real class and character, with Sauvignon freshness. The main course was a pastilla of pigeon with a superb Château de Malleret 1996: although we're quite a way from Bordeaux, the taste in these parts is very much for claret.
Pudding was a millefeuille of chcocolate and I confess to furthering the experiment with XO Excellence (but it was still better on its own, afterwards).
The blending hall at Rémy Martin. That's me sitting on the right-hand end of the bench, looking at yet another map of Cognac. But thank God for somewhere to sit!
(Pic: Steven Morris)
The blending hall at Rémy Martin. That's me sitting on the right-hand end of the bench, looking at yet another map of Cognac. But thank God for somewhere to sit!(Pic: Steven Morris)
posted by John Radford at
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