At our Domaine we only use our own, hand-picked grapes in the wine
making process.

We manufacture our own wine and we distil at our own distillery. Naturally, our Cognac is distilled only from our highest quality wine.

In the days before Cognac was monopolized by huge luxury brand conglomerates, which own brands spreading from handbags to champagne, Cognac was known as the “King of Wine”.  With good reason: One bottle of Cognac contains the concentrated aromas of four bottles of wine.

There is little "royal" about today’s industrialized duty-free cognac. Underneath the elegant packaging of its thousands of different labels and brands is a melange of several 100 million bottles of wine from far more than 5,000 different wine-makers. Even sugar syrup is added to tame the sharp smell of alcohol.

XO is not a quality mark, it just means that the Cognac was stored for six years in oak barrels.
So what happens to Cognac in oak?
After distillation the Cognac is colourless and has about 65 % Alc/vol..
Alcohol is a solvent, it absorbs the aromas of the oak cask. Oak is a natural product, each tree has its own, slightly different taste.
However, after six to nine months there is almost no more taste left in the oak. The oak does not contribute to the taste of the Cognac. Quite the opposite. Through the evaporation of the alcohol, the Cognac continuously loses all its fruity aromas. Cognac is reduced down to Whisky; no wonder many people prefer a good crafted whisky to an industrialised Cognac.

At the Domaine we have developed our own, natural process to preserve all the aromas. Our manufactured eau d’vin shows the typical mineral note of our terroir and our grapes contain such concentrated aromas that we do not need to resort to adding syrup. Our handcrafted Cognac contains so much natural fruit and sweetness that one does not even realise it is 40% proof!

This process is very labour intensive and requires tasting of each and every barrel on a monthly basis. You will appreciate that this process limits the number of bottles released each year.

Cognac should be tasted at a temperature of 12°C and served in tulip shaped glasses. If you would like to test how good a Cognac really is, leave the empty glass overnight and smell it the next morning.