Alcademics.com

The New Remy V: Unaged Cognac or French Pisco?

I finally got the press release for Remy V, the new product debuting in September in two trial markets- the San Francisco Bay Area and Atlanta. I'd heard the word on the street about this and posted a couple hints to my Twitter feed and Facebook page last and this week, but this was the first I got an actual press release on it. 

 

Remy V is not a cognac because it is unaged- just double-distilled on the lees like cognac, chill-filtered, and rested before bottling. They're releasing the product with cocktail recipes from mixologist Charles Hardwick. 

I guess the proper name for this product would be a grape eau de vie or grape brandy. It's not a cognac since it's not aged long enough. It's not a marc (which is French grappa) because that is made from the leftovers of wine production rather than with the whole grape. 

It might be close to Peruvian pisco in that it is distilled from grapes in pot stills. Pisco comes from Peru or Chile, though (in Chile pisco can be column-distilled and slightly aged), so obviously this product won't be billing itself as a pisco. Furthermore, pisco is distilled only one time in a pot still and it is distilled to proof, meaning no water is added before bottling. Cognac is distilled twice and usually watered to bottling proof. One would expect Remy V to be more neutral and less grapey than pisco, but it's impossible to say at this point. 

So the big question is how the product tastes. I don't know yet, but I can't wait to find out. 

 

Sleeves are IN this Season with Moet-Hennessy

Sleeves! Sleeves! Sleeves! Everything in sleeves! 

Moet-Hennessy found the hot new look of the season by putting sleeves on all their products.

Perhaps they were inspired by the champagnes they put in sleeves a few seasons ago, like this attractive ice jacket for Veuve-Clicquot.  Sassy!

 

Then they did the same thing with flasks of Hennessy V.S. just this year.

So fresh!  SO funky!

Thinking ahead for fall, they knew it would get chilly, and said,  "SLEEVES FOR EVERYONE. EVERYONE GETS A SLEEVE!"

So they did one for Chopin vodka. It's the puffy jacket for potato vodka. FABULOUS.

More Fun With Distillery Waste

I am a big fan of distillery waste. Not bathing in it, but learning about it. 

In most cases where a grain is distilled into whiskey or vodka, the spent grain (after all the sugar has been removed to be fermented) is sold off as animal feed. In Cognac (at Hennessy anyway) the spent lees (grape parts) are taken to an industrial distiller to get more alcohol out of them, and the "heavy sediments" of the grape juice go for cattle feed and for use in pharmaceutical products. In tequila production, the spent fibers from the agave pinas are sometimes put back on the fields as fertilizer, sometimes mixed with the heads and tails of distillation. 

 (There is a lot of leftover vegetation in tequila production.)

Many sugar cane distillers (either at the sugar factory for rum or at the distillery for rhum agricole) burn the spent sugar cane stalks to heat the steam engine that powers the distillery. 

(Spent sugar cane to be burned at Rhum Clement distillery on Martinique.) 

(Huge steam-powered gears at Rhum Clement distillery on Martinique.)  

The heads and tails are the waste products of distillation, made up of alcohol, water, and undesirable flavor compounds that distillers don't want in their final products. These are also recycled. In scotch whisky, these are put back into the still for the next batch of distillation. (Somehow they never build up and overwhelm the spirit- weird.) Many companies sell the heads and tails to industrial distillers who make pure spirit, cosmetics, and other products. Some use this alcohol as fuel to heat their distilleries in winter. 

(The condenser at Fettercairn.) 

Speaking of heat, many (if not most) distilleries are mainly powered by hot water; heated either by an oil burner or by burning waste materials like the sugar cane stalks mentioned above. The hot water heats the stills to convert the liquids into steam. Cold water is also needed in the condensers of the still to convert the alcohol in steam form back into liquid form. Typically this cool water comes from a nearby stream or river. After it is used in the condenser it is now hot water, which isn't usually suitable for dumping back into the water stream from whence it came until it is cool. In some distilleries such as the one for Blue Ice Vodka, this hot water is used to lightly heat a warehouse in the winters. 

What About the Water in the Still? 

On my recent trip to the Isle of Jura, The Dalmore, and Fettercairn distilleries I learned about more industrial waste. This made me very happy. 

For some reason nobody talks about the leftover water from distillation. Distillation is really just separating alcohol from water in order to concentrate the alcohol. Concentrate alcohol in beer and you get (unaged) whisky or vodka. Concentrate it in wine and you get brandy. The heads and tails contain alcohol and this is valuable so it gets recycled, but there is still the water left in the still. 

(Stills at Fettercairn.) 

At Fettercairn, Jura's master distiller Willie Tait explained it: After the first distillation, the leftover water also contains yeast bodies from fermentation. This water/yeast mix is called "pot ale," and it can be boiled down into a high-protein syrup used as cattle feed or as fertilizer. 

After the second distillation the leftovers are mostly water with a high copper content with some congeners. Tait said this mixture is called the "spent lees," which is confusing because in cognac this means something different. I also failed to write down how this water is recycled if it is at all, so I have more fun facts about distillery waste to learn!   

Glasgow Bars: The Blue Dog

The Blue Dog, as three different people told me, is "the place where everyone ends up," as it's open until three in the morning. I got there a little before 1AM on Saturday night and it was jammed. 

 

The long bar had five or six bartenders working at the same time. The cocktail menu didn't look terribly appealing to me with the exception of a couple drinks.

After a short and understandable wait, I ordered a Spruce Moose, which calls for Rittenhouse rye, calvados, maple syrup, and orange bitters. Despite the crowd, the bartender took his time and made it with care, which I greatly appreciated. The drink came out well-balanced and pretty darn tasty. Huge points for that. 

The crowd was a complete mix of everyone from 20 to 50-plus year olds. It had the look of a place that really gets crazy the later it gets. It's just up from my hotel, so I might give it another visit in a fews days.

 

New Booze: Paul-Marie & Fils Devant La Porte Cognac

I received a sample of Paul-Marie & Fils Cognac, a brand independently bottled by Nicolas Palazzi. Palazzi is buying single casks of cognac  and hand bottling them unfiltered and at full cask strength. He apparently has a few bottlings under different names and this is the first under the Paul-Marie & Fils label.

The one he sent me to try is the Devant La Porte barrel, meaning "the barrel in front of the door". Devant La Porte was distilled in 1951 and bottled in August of 2009. The cask produced 257 bottles at the full 51% alcohol and they retail for a suggested $600 each.

This cognac is a dark copper in color, with an aroma typical of well-aged grapes- a slightly gamey (rancio?) wet redwood with a fresh grape and raisin and slight chocolate backing. On the palate it bursts with dusty fruitcake flavors- dried apricots, pears in syrup, fruit leather, regular leather, bitter tobacco, hot car vinyl, dried oranges. It must be pretty acidic, because my mouth began salivating like crazy- I'm practically drooling. With each successive sip I'm getting more and more flavors and the aftertaste just lingers forever.

In short, this is really freaking delicious cognac.

I was a bit worried when Palazzi said this was bottled at cask strength- thinking that would be good for mixing but not sipping at that high proof- but I was way wrong. This cognac is too good for mixing (at its price point it sure ought to be) and there is nothing too hot about it even at 51% alcohol. I say drink it at full proof and just have fewer sips- it will last longer than way too.

An Online Course in Cognac

I'm increasingly interested in how different alcohol production/control and marketing bureaus differ from each other in their approach to promoting their common interests. The Scotch Whisky Association leads by litigation and has good information on its website, but doesn't seem to do all that much outreach to press. Neither tequila's CRT (regulatory agency) or the CNIT (industry bureau) is doing a good job of any sort with regard to PR, seemingly leaving brands to do the work. Lately I've noticed the Cognac Bureau, the BNIC, adding new programs, hosting events, and launching online tools that are actually useful. Go cognac!

Case in point: the Cognac Training Toolkit. This is an online course of sorts, split into three levels:

Introductory Level One (VS), for beginners

Intermediate Level Two (VSOP), aimed at those who need a deeper knowledge of Cognac for work or pleasure

Advanced Level Three (XO), aimed at professionals, journalists and students in advanced courses.

The "courses" are more like good PDF text outlines and accompanying Powerpoint slides, so you don't really get the narrative but instead the key facts and figures about cognac in either beginning, intermediate, or professional length. The translations into English aren't perfect by a long shot, but it seems you can understand what they're saying fine enough.

I started reading the Advanced level course and it looks really informative. I've read a couple books on cognac lately so I'll probably skip the rest for now, but should I ever need to check a fact, I think this will be the place I'll go.  

The Cognac Training Toolkits are here.

Cognac by Salvatore Calabrese Book Review

This fall I visited the Cognac region of France. Also the trip was Salvatore Calabrese, owner of Fifty in London, where I visited a year ago on a trip with Plymouth Gin. In preparation for Cognac I read the book Cognac by Nicholas Faith because Calabrese's book is a lot bigger and didn't fit in my luggage.

Also, I thought Calabrese's book Cognac: A Liquid History wasn't going to be very good. It has beautiful pictures on just about every page and large font with large spacing between sentences, so I assumed it was going to be light on the content.

Not so much. The book is actually has most of the information as in Faith's journalistic book, just written more in narrative style than in charts and graphs. This is very fitting with Calabrese's personality- he's one of those bartenders who is a master of service and a lover of the romance of cocktails. 

I particularly liked his detailed timeline of what seems like every event in the history of cognac. Another strong point is his description and tasting notes on pre-Phylloxera cognacs (Phylloxera his the region approximately 1860-1900, wiping out the entire industry). Calabrese's bar specializes in these very rare, very expensive cognacs and he has tasted more of these than most people.

Also very cool were his generalized tasting notes. He describes different colors, aromas, and flavors in cognac of different ages from five to 20 years. This should help me (and others) identify the age of cognac by the flavors.

I suppose the downside of this book is that the index isn't very good and the information is scattered throughout the narrative, making it difficult to find particular bits of information. It is a very good book about cognac; it's just not written as a reference book.

Glossy Booze: Big October Edition

Glossy Booze is a regular Alcademics feature in which I cover the liquor coverage in glossy magazines.

Bon Appetit (October)lists a recipe for the Highland's Fall from Peter Vestinos, available here. Also, a story on dry cider and one on dessert wines. In November St. John Frizell has a recipe for the coffee/rum drink Koffie Van Brunt.

Everyday With Rachael Ray (October) has a story on "gum cocktails"- not something you get at Tailor, but combining flavors of gum to make new flavors.

GQ (September) had a big feature on the six best drinking cities in the US. They were San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago, Portland (OR), Nashville, and New York.

Conde Nast Traveler has a list of three tropical island bars in the Bahamas, plus a recipe for the Goombay Smash.

7X7 (September) has a story on Rickhouse. In the October issue, Jordan Mackay writes about relocated NYC sommelier David Lynch. 

Men's Journal (October) list America's best beers here, and the top five beer towns here.

Sunset (October) has beer and food pairings for Octoberfest, and a story on green wine packaging.

Esquire has a recipe for the Grasshopper. Really!

Details lists some "really excellent canned beer,"and a few places in which to drink it.

And the winner for best drink coverage goes to Food & Wine- and they didn't even have any cocktail recipes. Their stories are:

• What sommeliers know best.
•  Understanding Oregon Pinot Noir country
• Wineries by the sea all over the world- France and Spain, US, Australia, Portugal, and South Africa.
• Wines for drinking, not overthinking
• American Wine Awards
• A preview of the F&W Wine Guide 2010
• How to be a smarter wine shopper
• Gruner Veltliner
• 50 classic wines to try
• 15 rules for wine and food pairings