Fruit & Raw Material

What grapes is Cognac made from? Almost exclusively from Ugni Blanc, a grape variety that covers more than 98 percent of the area under vine. Colombard, Folle Blanche, Montils and Sémillon are also permitted, along with up to ten percent Folignan.

The area is vast: 87,648 hectares of vineyards, roughly a tenth of all French vine acreage and, according to the BNIC, the country's largest white wine region. An average estate farms 20 hectares. Cognac employs 14,500 people directly, with around 72,500 depending on it for their livelihood overall.

For the houses, this is about more than just volume. They assemble their Cognacs from the spirits of many growers, vintages and vineyard sites, a blend known as the assemblage. Above all, the wine from any individual supplier needs to be clean and high in acidity. It's the cellar masters who then smooth out the differences between strong and weak years.

Wood is part of the raw material too. The casks are made of oak, traditionally sourced from the Limousin forest or the forest of Tronçais in the Auvergne. Whatever vanilla and spice notes the spirit later shows come from these staves.

Is Cognac a pomace brandy like grappa or marc? No. Pomace brandy is made from the pressed grape skins and solids left over after pressing, whereas Cognac is distilled from fully fermented wine that has long since been separated from the skins. Legally, this makes it a wine distillate rather than a pomace brandy.

Not all of the must becomes wine. Pineau des Charentes, the local aperitif, is a blend of grape must and young Cognac. The spirit halts fermentation, leaving the grapes' sugar in the glass, and the result sits somewhere between a liqueur and a wine.