Top Things to Know about
Brandy & Cognac
Brandy has a branding problem. Ask most people what Cognac is and they'll say "fancy brandy," which is technically true but leaves out the part where an entire category of spirits gets overshadowed by one very famous French region. Time to fix that.
1,All Cognac Is Brandy—but Not All Brandy Is Cognac
This is the big one. If you remember nothing else, remember this.
Fermented fruit from anywhere = wine. Distilled wine = brandy.
Brandy made with Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche and Colombard grapes grown in the Cognac region of France = Cognac.
Think of Cognac as brandy with a very particular French address and a lot more rules.
2. Brandy Can Come From Many Fruits
The word brandy comes from the Dutch brandewijn, meaning “burnt wine.”
Although most traditional brandy is grape-based, fruit brandies can be made from apples, pears, cherries, plums, raspberries, and other fruits. That’s why the brandy family reunion is so large.
3. Cognac Has a Very Specific Zip Code
Cognac can only come from the legally defined Cognac region of France and must follow strict production rules. The principal grape is Ugni Blanc, with other permitted varieties including Folle Blanche and Colombard. So no, you can't make Cognac in California any more than you can make Kentucky bourbon in Paris and expect nobody to notice.
4. Cognac Gets Distilled Twice
Traditional Cognac is double-distilled in copper pot stills and then aged in French oak.
The oak traditionally comes primarily from the Limousin and Tronçais forests, and the long aging process adds color, aroma, and flavor.
Basically, Cognac spends years sitting around in expensive French wood and somehow becomes more valuable. Nice work if you can get it.
5. The Angels Are Drinking Too
As Cognac ages in underground barrels, some alcohol and water naturally evaporate. This is romantically known as the Angel's Share. Cognac producers lose a significant amount of spirit during decades of aging—which apparently means heaven has one heck of a liquor cabinet.
6. Know the Big Cognac Names
Four of the best-known Cognac houses are:
Courvoisier (core-VAH-see-ay)
Hennessy (HEN-uh-see)
Martell (mar-TELL)
Rémy Martin (ray-MEE mar-TAN)
Courvoisier has also been famously associated with Napoleon Bonaparte, an association the brand has leaned into for generations.
7. Those Letters on the Bottle Mean Something
Cognac's age designation is based on the youngest eau-de-vie in the blend.
VS — Very Special: aged at least 2 years
VSOP — Very Superior Old Pale: aged at least 4 years
XO — Extra Old: aged at least 10 years
You'll also encounter classifications such as Napoléon and Hors d'Âge.
Maurice Hennessy introduced the famous star classification system in the 19th century. Apparently, even Cognac had customer reviews before the Internet.
THE KING OF COGNACS
Louis XIII
Rémy Martin's Louis XIII is one of the world's most prestigious Cognacs. It is made exclusively with eaux-de-vie from Grande Champagne, Cognac's premier cru, including spirits aged for many decades. And then there's the bottle. Louis XIII is famously presented in an ornate Baccarat crystal decanter, and depending on the edition and market, a bottle can cost several thousand dollars or considerably more.
Order a glass in a high-end bar and don't be surprised by a three-digit—or even four-digit—price. This is not the Cognac you accidentally mix with Coke.
COGNAC'S OLDER COUSIN: ARMAGNAC
Armagnac (ar-man-YAK) is another prestigious French grape brandy, produced in the Armagnac region of Gascony. It dates back to at least the early 1300s, making it France's oldest documented grape brandy—older than Cognac.
Unlike Cognac, which is generally distilled twice, traditional Armagnac is commonly distilled once in a continuous Armagnac still, helping give it its distinctive character.
If Cognac is the polished gentleman in a tailored suit, Armagnac is his slightly older country cousin who owns a vineyard and doesn't care what you're wearing.
OTHER BRANDIES TO KNOW
Pisco (PEE-skoh) — A South American grape spirit strongly associated with Peru and Chile.
Calvados (KAL-vah-dohs) — French apple brandy from Normandy.
Applejack — An American apple spirit with a long history.
Framboise (frahm-BWAHZ) — Raspberry eau-de-vie.
Kirsch (KEERSH) — Cherry eau-de-vie traditionally associated with Central Europe.
Poire (PWAHR) — Pear eau-de-vie.
Slivovitz (SLIHV-uh-vits) — Plum brandy traditionally produced throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
Try saying all of those correctly after three Sidecars.
DON'T FORGET POMACE BRANDY
After wine is made, the leftover grape skins, seeds, pulp, and sometimes stems are called pomace. Why throw that away when you can distill it?
Two famous examples are:
Grappa — Italy
Marc — France
It's basically the wine world's version of leftovers—and some very good leftovers at that.
GRAND MARNIER
Grand Marnier is a famous orange liqueur traditionally made with Cognac and bitter orange essence. The best-known expression, Cordon Rouge, was created by Louis-Alexandre Marnier Lapostolle in 1880. In other words, Cognac put on an orange hat and went to a cocktail party.
THE BRANDY SNIFTER
The traditional brandy glass is the snifter—a short-stemmed glass with a large rounded bowl and narrow opening designed to concentrate aromas. A smaller tulip-shaped glass is also favored for serious tasting because it concentrates aromas without encouraging you to heat the spirit excessively. And yes, brandy snifters can get comically large. At some point you're no longer holding a glass; you're holding a fishbowl.
TO WARM OR NOT TO WARM?
Traditionally, brandy and Cognac were often served warmed because gentle warmth releases aromas. Today, good Cognac is generally served around room temperature rather than deliberately heated.
➜ Back in the 1980s, I worked at a swanky place where we actually had little metal Cognac warmers with tealight candles underneath them. Very elegant—and apparently nobody from the fire department had seen them yet. Even into the 2000s, I occasionally had older guests request warmed Cognac. I would gently warm the snifter, then present it over an Old Fashioned glass partially filled with hot water, set on a cocktail-napkin-lined saucer, with ice water on the side. It looked elegant, made the guest happy, and was much classier than saying, “Hang on while I microwave your Rémy.”
BRANDY COCKTAILS TO KNOW
Classic cocktails featuring brandy or Cognac include:
Sidecar • Brandy Alexander • Stinger • Between the Sheets
You'll also find brandy used in historic punches, Sazerac variations, flips, sours, and other classics.
The Sidecar is probably the essential Cognac cocktail every bartender should know.
BARTENDER GOOD TO KNOW
No universal trick involving laying a snifter on its side and filling it to the rim determines a proper serving. Snifters come in wildly different sizes, so that old bar trick can turn a standard pour into a mistake. Congratulations, you just gave away half the bottle. Use the establishment's measured pour—typically 1½ or 2 ounces—and price accordingly. Because when you're pouring Louis XIII, “close enough” is not an acceptable unit of measurement.
History of Brandy & Cognac
Brandy exists because wine doesn't travel well.
In the 16th century, Dutch traders sailing to the west coast of France for wine, salt, and paper discovered that the long voyage home wasn't kind to their cargo—it took up too much space and could spoil before it arrived.
Their solution?
Distill it. A concentrated spirit took up less room, cost less to tax and ship, and survived the journey better. Basically, they invented the 16th-century version of “some assembly required.”
They called it brandewijn—“burnt wine,” a reference to the fire heating the still.
English traders eventually shortened the word to brandy, presumably because brandewijn gets considerably harder to pronounce after a few glasses.
The plan, according to popular legend, was to add water back to the spirit once
it reached Holland and turn it back into wine. Then somebody supposedly forgot, tasted the undiluted spirit, and discovered it was better on its own.
“Oops, we forgot to add the water” is a wonderful origin story for brandy. Unfortunately, it's probably not true.
Most Cognac historians point out that distillation doesn't work quite that neatly in reverse. What we do know is that people started drinking the distilled spirit
as-is—and nobody seemed particularly interested in putting the water back.
The earliest documented reference to eau de vie du Coniack dates to 1517, though small-scale, single-distillation stills were likely already operating in the region. Sometime in the 1600s, double distillation entered the picture.
Exactly who deserves credit remains debatable—the Dutch and various French distillers have competing claims—but the result was a more refined, stable spirit that could spend years aging in barrels.
Apparently, if distilling wine once is good, somebody will eventually say, “What happens if we do it again?”
By the early 1700s, Cognac had gone from a practical shipping solution to a genuine luxury product. In 1715, Jean Martell, a young entrepreneur from Jersey, moved to the region and founded Maison Martell, one of the earliest major Cognac houses. Rémy Martin followed about a decade later.
The region that started with people trying to figure out how to get French wine
onto a Dutch ship without ruining it had become home to one of the world's most prestigious spirits.
Turns out, “we accidentally made something wonderful while trying to solve a shipping problem” is a surprisingly common story in the drinks world.
Champagne has a similar résumé—just with more bubbles and considerably more exploding bottles.
Photo by Alexas_Fotos Pixabay / CC0 Creative Commons
Brandy & Cognac Cocktails in Film
1942 Casablanca
French 75s.
1947 The Bishop’s Wife
A round of Stingers.
1948 The Big Clock
Stingers.
1950 In a Lonely Place
Stinger.
1956 High Society
Stingers.
1957 Kiss Them for Me
Stingers.
1960 The Apartment
Stingers.
1961 Days of Wine and Roses
Brandy Alexander.
1983 Gorky Park
Stinger.
1988 Beaches
Stingers.
2008 Two Lovers
Brandy Alexander.
Brandy & Cognac Cocktails in Books
1869 Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain
“Give us a brandy smash!”
1872 Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, Sir Edward Belcher
“And then Captain Bening made us a Champagne Cocktail. Half a tumbler of champagne, a little brandy, a little bitters, a little sugar.”
Fun Brandy & Cognac Facts
Phylloxera Hit Cognac Too
The same microscopic bug that devastated European wine in the late 1800s came for Cognac's vineyards as well.
By 1878–79, more than 80% of the region's vines had been destroyed. Growers had luckily stockpiled large reserves of aged Cognac in the years before the crisis, which is part of why genuinely old,
pre-phylloxera Cognac is so rare and prized
today—it's essentially a taste of the vineyards Cognac had before the disaster.
Once replanting began, growers turned to Ugni Blanc grafted onto resistant American rootstock, and it became the region's dominant grape—the same Ugni Blanc that still makes up the vast majority of Cognac today.
France had the grapes. America had the roots. The bug had seriously underestimated international cooperation.
The Louis XIII Decanter Started With a Battlefield Find
In the mid-1800s, Paul-Émile Rémy Martin discovered a 16th-century metal flask on the site of the 1569 Battle of Jarnac, not far from Cognac. He was so taken with its design—spiked detailing and fleur-de-lis medallions—that he modeled an entirely new crystal decanter after it.
That flask is the reason Louis XIII still comes in that unmistakable spiked Baccarat bottle today. So one of the world's most recognizable luxury Cognac decanters owes its shape to something somebody dug out of the ground centuries after a battle.
One man's battlefield junk is another man's $4,000 Cognac bottle.
Cognac Officially Became "Cognac" in 1936
For most of its history, Cognac was essentially very good brandy from a very specific place. France didn't formally recognize Cognac as an Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) until 1936, establishing the geographic boundaries and production rules that define authentic Cognac.
In other words, France finally put the legal equivalent of “Don't even THINK about calling yours Cognac” in writing.
"Eau de Vie du Coniack" Has Paperwork Going Back to 1517
The earliest known written reference to Cognac brandy dates all the way back to 1517, although some form of distilled wine was likely being produced in the area before that.
So depending on how you count it, Cognac has been around for about 500 years—or
considerably longer.
Brandy & Cognac Timeline
8th century — Arab alchemists invent the alembic still, the foundational technology that makes distillation possible.
16th century — Dutch traders sailing to the west coast of France for wine begin distilling it to survive the journey home, calling the result brandewijn — "burnt wine." The word eventually becomes "brandy."
1517 — The earliest known written reference to eau de vie du Coniack appears — the first documented mention of what would become Cognac.
1600s — Double distillation takes hold in the Cognac region, producing a more refined, more stable spirit that can actually age well in barrels instead of being consumed young.
1715 — Jean Martell, a young entrepreneur from Jersey, founds Maison Martell — one of the first true Cognac houses.
~1725 — Rémy Martin follows about a decade later, founding what becomes one of the world's most famous Cognac houses.
1780 — Hennessy is founded by Richard Hennessy, an Irish soldier turned brandy merchant.
1850s — Paul-Émile Rémy Martin discovers a 16th-century metal flask on the site of the 1569 Battle of Jarnac, inspiring the future design of the Louis XIII decanter.
1874 — The first Louis XIII Cognac is blended and bottled, presented in the now-iconic Baccarat crystal decanter modeled after that battlefield flask.
1878–79 — Phylloxera devastates the Cognac region, destroying more than 80% of its vineyards. Growers' pre-crisis reserves become some of the rarest Cognac in the world today.
1880 — Louis-Alexandre Marnier Lapostolle creates Grand Marnier, blending Cognac with bitter orange essence.
19th century — Maurice Hennessy introduces the star classification system, an early version of the VS/VSOP/XO labeling still used today.
1936 — France grants Cognac official Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) status, legally locking in the region's boundaries and production rules.
Today — Cognac remains one of the world's most tightly regulated and prestigious spirit categories, with brandy's wider family — Armagnac, Calvados, pisco, grappa, and dozens of fruit eaux-de-vie — still going strong around the world.