A Cognac for each moment of the day?

by Brent Gregston

Article published on the 2008-11-10 Latest update 2008-11-16 12:59 TU

© Musée du Cognac

More and more people are drinking Cognac in cocktails these days. While people have been distilling the brandy for over 400 years, cocktails depend on markets: the US drinks quite a lot while Asia prefers its Cognac straight. How do you like yours? The Salon de spirit, a brandy trade show, showed what is available.

It's hard to think of any French product that benefits more from the globalised world than Cognac.

Among French wine regions, only Champagne has achieved such complete success. Cognac has long been a status drink in China and, until recently, was better known there than Coca-Cola.

But there is also a question of marketing muscle. In contrast to the fragmentation of French winemakers, Cognac production is concentrated in the hands of just four companies.

They blend and market 80 per cent of Cognac and invest heavily in brand marketing. That's why Hennessy, Remy Martin, Courvoisier and Martell have instant name-recognition.

Henri Brunel is the sales manager for A de Fussigny, a small Cognac house with big ambitions.

"With Cognac," he explains, " you have larger houses that are really marketing brands….not just talking about the quality of the product but establishing it as a brand. Just as a perfume brand would be established."

One surprising trend is that more and more people are drinking the world's favourite brandy in cocktails.

The Cognac industry held its first "Cognac cocktail summit" earlier this year and bartenders from all over the world spent three days inventing a new drink called "the summit". It's a mixture of Cognac, fresh ginger, cucumber, green lemons and mineral water.

According to Henri Brunel, the Cognac cocktail trend is not all-conquering:  "The US is a more cocktail-driven market. The Russian market is different. The Asian market is going to be different. I think people tend to drink their Cognac without mixing it."

 He says  that there is a type of Cognac for every type of customer. "You can have a Cognac that you want to mix with Coke and you can have a Cognac that you want to sip by the fireplace. There is a Cognac for each moment of the day."

American rap artists sing about Cognac in the same breath as sex, guns and Cadillacs. "Yak" is slang for cognac and "Henny" is for Hennessy.

Busta Rhymes reached the top five of the rap charts in America with a song called "Pass the Courvoisier". There's even a group called D-Black Cognac. Snoop Doggy Dog sings about Landy, his favourite brandy.  

"Landy is a very famous Cognac in the United States because it represents the black community," says Anais Bahri, who works for Ferrand cognac, which distils Landy. "It's a symbol for them…instead of whisky for white people. He did a song about Landy because he loves it. He drinks it everyday, I guess, with his band and his girls."

The global economy has been good to Cognac-producers for over a decade. Nine out ten bottles are sold outside France. And even now, during an economic crisis, they don't seem worried.

After all, they have four centuries of tradition on their side, to say nothing of the Chinese and Snoop Doggy Dog.