La Lettre de La Cagouille de Gérard Allemandou

Version Française

A-propos

At first glance, the color of cognac makes the amateur wonder. One must be aware of the color, especially when we realize that in the old days it was a usual thing to taste cognac in blue colored glasses! It was then possible to judge cognac without being influenced by its color. In fact, artificial coloring, so elegantly called darkening (obscuration) is legal. So one must be vary of dark eaux-de-vie, when their colors may come from walnut stain, rather that the light blondness due to good quality wood, polished with time. We must stop believing that the darker a cognac is, the older the age.

Coup de Coeur - Dégustation

Les Antiquaires du Cognac in Jarnac supply a Fins Bois that was poured into a cask in 1949 and kept there until 1986.

This Cognac is exceptional, it has a sublime way of expressing a balanced mixture of the almost austere sharpness of the locality where it was born and a nearly perfect intrinsic quality. Its fragrance creates an immediate bedazzlement: it comes straight up, with subtlety brought with the elegance of a thoroughbred, combining the bouquet of dry vine shoots with the aroma of a light "rancio" overcome by fresh walnut. It evolves in time with strength, always present, ever changing, floating, and deep at the same time. A wonderful pleasure.

Its mouth is a tasty recall of its nose, the right harmony between a force brought under control with age and the flavors the evolved with time. The evanescent touch of the vine flower and cinnamon bark, the clever combination of camphor wood and dry vine shoot, a good example of balance in simplicity.

A great success, and one might think that, as much as others, this vintage deserves to age and bring its differences.

Promenade

I love to take walks at the end of the winter season, when the first rays of sunshine struggle to pierce the layers of clouds, among the vines of the northern hillsides of Fins Bois, between Rouillac and Matha, on the "line".

The line is a former railroad; it was taken apart at the end of the train era, when, in Charentes, it was replaced by the busses of the famous Citram Company. The railroad has been converted into a dirt track. It does not wind, it goes straight, cutting its way through the lands it tailored in its own fashion. And there, all of a sudden, when a few days before the landscape seemed frozen still in the heavy and lonely mist, a whole new life sprouts up. Shoots are being cut, wood is being pulled, branches picked up and tied into bundles; the vine sheds its clothes woven with wood and stems, as though it were undressing to come back to life.

Les Antiquaires du Cognac, Lartige, 16200 Jarnac, France

Téléphone: (+33) 5 45 81 08 06 Fax: (+33) 5 45 81 24 13