Region & History

Picardy has no vodka history like the ones Poland or Russia can tell. No monastery here ever distilled grain spirit, no state ever imposed a monopoly. This region's story begins late, in 1997, and it begins with an American.

Sidney Frank, a New York drinks importer, wanted a vodka for the American market that wouldn't sound like Eastern Europe, but like luxury. He looked for a place with a strong reputation for craftsmanship and found it in France. Together with master distiller François Thibault, he decided where the ingredients should come from: winter wheat from Picardy, a plain north of Paris known for its soil quality as the breadbasket of France.

Why two regions for one vodka? The grain grew in the north, but for the water and finishing, they chose the area around Cognac in the west, where brandy has been refined and aged for centuries. To this day, the facility there blends and bottles the wheat spirit with spring water from Gensac-la-Pallue. The brand has since been called Grey Goose, named after the grey wild goose that migrates over the plains in winter.

Success came quickly. Grey Goose became the best-selling vodka in the top price segment in the US, and as early as 2004, Sidney Frank sold the brand to the spirits company Bacardi, reportedly for around two billion US dollars. It was one of the highest prices ever paid for a single spirits brand.

A few years later, a second vodka from France followed: Cîroc, developed since 2003 by Master Distiller Jean-Sébastien Robicquet, whose family has been distilling in Salles-d'Angles near Cognac for over five hundred years. Unlike Grey Goose, Cîroc doesn't rely on grain but on grapes from Gaillac, further south.