Reviews of wines and spirits for the curious drinker.
Rémy Martin is one of the world’s oldest and best known Cognac brands, with selections that range, at my local liquor store at least, from the $13 St. Remy French brandy to the $9000 Rémy Martin Louis XIII Time Collection: City of Lights – 1900. (I have tried one of these, but not both.)
Obviously, I enjoy wine, but I’m a fan of liquor too, especially brandy. Brandy is distilled from wine and aged in wood to give it its characteristic flavor and color. The word brandy comes from the Dutch brandewijin, meaning “burned (distilled) wine.” It is usually made from grape wine, but can be distilled from other fruit wines, most often apple, in which case it is called apple brandy or applejack generically and Calvados in France. Cognac is brandy that specifically comes from the town of Cognac and the delimited surrounding areas in western France. So, all Cognacs are brandy, but not all brandies are Cognac. For more detail on Cognac, click here.