Brandy vs. Cognac
Cognac is a type of brandy, but brandy is the much larger category. The simplest analogy is: Cognac is to brandy what Champagne is to sparkling wine.
What exactly is brandy?
Brandy is a spirit distilled from fermented fruit, most commonly grapes. The word comes from the Dutch brandewijn, meaning “burned wine”—wine concentrated by distillation.
Most of what we casually call brandy is grape brandy. To make it, wine is fermented, distilled into a spirit, and usually matured in oak. But “brandy” is a very broad family. It encompasses:
Cognac and Armagnac from France
Brandy de Jerez from Spain
American brandy
South African brandy
Italian and other European grape brandies
Fruit brandies made from apples, pears, cherries, plums, etc.
Some people claim that “brandy isn’t as good as Cognac,” but that doesn’t really make sense. Cognac is brandy, and there are non-Cognac brandies capable of competing with excellent Cognacs. Continue reading “Brandy vs. Cognac. What’s the difference?”