WELCOME TO the turn of the 20th century,” said my guide, Marielle Chopin-Pascaud, as I entered the tasting room of BacheGabrielsen (bache-gabrielsen.com), on a quiet street in downtown Cognac. As four generations of Bache-Gabrielsens stared down at me from black-and-white portraits, I sipped the double-distilled brandy that bears the name of this city and region. Blended from spirits dating as far back as World War I, the drink offered a complex taste from another era: rich, unctuous, with evocative aromas and flavours of well-worn leather, dark tobacco, antique furniture. It was the sort of brandy you’d imagine a man in a smoking jacket might drink from a snifter while sitting before a roaring fire.
But as we descended into the cellars, we entered the 21st century. I saw Cognacs aged in amphorae, like the orange wines that have become the rage at natural-wine bars. Some were treated like bourbon, aged in American oak rather than French—a heresy in this tradition-minded place. “We want to be an audacious house,” Chopin-Pascaud told me.
That sort of quiet but radical innovation has become the norm. As a city, Cognac—which sits on the banks of the languid Charente, at the heart of the appellation of the same name—had always been a sleepy destination, the sort of place that rolled up the sidewalks at 10 pm. A decade ago, while running up a hefty tab with friends at a local bar, I remember being asked to leave because the staff wanted to close early. In the aughts, a friend who’d moved from Paris nearly went crazy with boredom and fled.
This story is from the January 2021 edition of Travel+Leisure India.
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This story is from the January 2021 edition of Travel+Leisure India.
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