In early January we booked to go see a motorhome at a dealer just outside Cognac – which looks close-ish but is in fact a good 3 hour cross-country drive from here. We overdid things the night before and tried to postpone, but the dealer recommended we didn’t as others were lining up to view it too. As we had rather specific requirements and this one fitted, we hauled ourselves out and off we went.
Turned out it was the perfect van for us, so just as well we did make the effort!
As it was a dealer sale, we then had to wait for all the checks and updates to be done to it, so about 3 weeks later we were able to collect it.
As it takes a couple of hours for the handover, this meant at least one overnight in the area and as we have already visited Cognac on our big 2012 trip, we decided to stay in Jarnac just nearby, which we found out is the home of Hine Cognac, founded by Thomas Hine from Dorset!
So we booked a tour and tasting and set off across the Dordogne to the Charente once again.
Jarnac, like Cognac, is on the River Charente which gives its name to the department but is significantly smaller – although it turns out it is also the home of Courvoisier.
The weather was not so kind to us, but then it is winter after all. As a result, not many touristy photos of the place as it was veiled in fog for much of the time.
The Hine tour was most enlightening. In 1791 the young Thomas Hine left his home in Beaminster, Dorset to learn the secrets of how cognac, his father’s favourite tipple, was produced. As the sixth of twelve children, each was encouraged to learn a business, and so having just turned sixteen he was on his way. However, the timing was somewhat off and he ended up being arrested in the French Revolution, and was imprisoned at the Château de Jarnac for several months. His marriage to Françoise-Elisabeth, the daughter of his hosts, and he went to work at the cognac producer they owned. In 1817, he renamed the company Thomas Hine & Co. More recently it has been rebranded as simply Hine.
Apparently a lot of the cognac producers have a similar history of ownership which traces back to the UK or Ireland, these countries being the biggest consumers of the drink.
The tour involves a lot of explanation of how eau de vie is produced from wine and then matured into cognac.
The first thing you are told is that a good cognac depends on a good wine – the area is surrounded by vineyards on terroirs called Grand and Petit Champagne as its similar to the soil of the Champagne region. Bit confusing at first! All the wine made from those vines goes to the production of eau de vie and Pineau de Charente. Most distilleries buy in the wine and focus on the business of producing Cognac. All Cognac is double distilled, whereas Armagnac is single distilled
Once they have the eau de vie, which is clear in colour, the ageing in the barrels commences. There is a great display of tubes of different ages of cognac which shows how the colour darkens with time as a result of the burnt oak barrels and the evaporation which gives the “Angel’s share” – there must be an awful lot of very merry angels based on how much is lost during evaporation!
As we learned in 2012 during the Martell tour, the most amazing thing about Cognac is that despite each year’s production being different, the various types they sell – VSOP, XO etc – are all blended to be consistent year by year. There is usually one cellar man who does this, just by personal tasting and knowledge which I find mind-blowing. And they keep the barrels a long time – some of the barrels used in the blending were dated 1935 and kept in a special area they called Paradise!
The labels for Hine have changed over the years, but the deer image is consistent and they have both a bright red garden version plus a taxidermy one in the entry area of their building on the Charente, one of the oldest houses in Jarnac. The position of the stag is described as rooted in France but with its head turned back towards England.
There are other links to the UK too – they are the only cognac suppliers to the Crown and also put some barrels of their Millesime (vintage) production into cellars at a whisky distillery in Scotland to get a different finish as the cellar conditions have as much effect as the barrels. Millesime cognacs are not blended but instead allowed to be different each year and from each location. They also keep one small bottle as a sample from every year of the vintage production which are decanted as “control” samples.
We had a tasting after that as part of our tour which they call Beyond Ordinary Standards. There was a VSOP with ginger ale, which for us drowned the cognac. Then 2 more VSOPs, 5 and 10 years old, and finally an XO which had an average age of 30 – as they are all blends the ages are always averages. Fortunately for our wallets, we both preferred the middle one – Hine Rare – and treated ourselves to a bottle and a set of tulip glasses which we were told are better for the aromas than the bowls we are used to seeing in most places. Apparently those are best if you wish to warm your cognac first.
The following day we went to pick up Hubert, as we have named our French camping-car – of course being French, you dont pronounce the first and last letters – so we have our own “uber” except its properly pronouced “oobear” !!!
