I’m a sucker for vintage things. In high school, I surfed the Goodwill circuit looking for vintage metal t-shirts. I wasn’t very successful, but I do remember pulling a pretty sweet Megadeath tour-concession shirt that I wore until the stitching struggled to hold the thing together and my mom tossed it in the trash. In college, I started collecting records, which turns out, wasn’t very good for my health or wallet. A good chunk of my student aid was spent chasing down vintage, Detroit-centric northern soul 45s, like Popcorn Wiley, while scavenging food scraps at my cafeteria job. We all have priorities – mine have always skewed towards vintage stuff for whatever unexplainable reason – it’s just visceral for me.
So now that I’m in the deep end of the spirits pool, it’s only natural that I have become obsessed with vintage booze. I’ve spent more time than anyone should turning over bottles of bourbon at sketchy liquor stores and looking at the numbers molded into the bottom of the glass. Odds are if you’re reading this blog, you have, too. Unlike bourbon, scotch made it easy and spared us the ridiculousness of checking the bottom of every bottle - a lot of bottlers put the vintage year right on the fucking label. Brilliant!
When I started getting into cognac and shopping for bottles, I noticed something interesting; some bottles have vintage dates and others just have numbers which are identified as “lots.” What is the deal with that? It seemed very strange, so I wanted to find out more. As it turns out, there’s a checkered history with “vintage-dated” cognac.
Currently, the BNIC regulates vintage-dated cognac and how a cognac can be classified as a vintage cognac. Per the BNIC website: a vintage Year is the “date that indicates the vintage year of the grape that was used for Cognac production. In the Cognac Region, the eaux-de-vie that have aged in vintage year cellars or in sealed casks are counted in vintage years.” A vintage cellar is a “cellar where the vintage eaux-de-vie are stored for their ageing process. This cellar is closed with two keys; and one of them is given to the BNIC.”
So, in the modern era, to be labeled as a vintage cognac, the grapes used in production must all be from the same production year and the barrel must be stored in a vintage cellar where the producer and the BNIC possess a key.
The Delamain website describes the BNIC’s involvement with their vintage cellar in this way: “with each vintage bottling, Delamain selects young, single-estate, single barrel Cognacs to be aged for 30-50 years in a special cellar in Jarnac. The barrels are locked into the vintage cellar under the strict control of the BNIC, the Cognac Trade Association, which holds one of the two keys necessary to enter the cellar. Every year from this cellar, Delamain selects small lots of Cognacs after no less than thirty years, and bottles them without blending. Vintage-dated Cognac is relatively rare, as its production has only recently been allowed under French law.”
The last sentence on the Delamain website caught my eye. Is vintage cognac a recent development under French law? That seemed very strange because I have seen very old bottles of cognac sporting vintage labels loud-and-proud right on the front of the bottle. As I dug around the web, I found a fantastic “vintage” LA Times article from 1994 that really broke down the usage of “vintage” and its patchwork application and meaning in cognac.
Per the LA Times article, prior to 1961, vintage dating was allowed. In 1961, the BNIC prohibited the use of vintage-dating of cognacs. The reason for the prohibition was two-fold: there were irregularities with vintages, i.e., producers were lying about vintage years, and also the focus of cognac turned more towards blending. Despite the prohibition on vintage-dating bottles, there was one interesting workaround for some cognac bottlers; dated cognac barrels that were sent to British wine merchants (think Berry Brothers) could be labeled as vintage-dated cognac. Apparently, the Brits didn’t care what the French rules prescribed, and the history of those two countries is littered with similar examples of their contempt and disregard of each other.
In 1988, the BNIC ended the prohibition on vintage-dated cognac, but even so, the issue of vintage-dating fraud didn’t go away. In 1994, the thought was the advent of carbon dating would keep producers honest; now that we’re in the future, we can point and laugh at history's ideas. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I can only thing of a handful of instances when carbon dating was used to verify potentially fraudulent booze (a few stupidly priced Macallans, at least from what I’ve read) - I don't think its a common thing in the 21st century.
With the reinstatement of vintage-dated cognac, the BNIC established a process of parsing out and maintaining cognac destined for vintage-dating: “all vintage Cognacs being held in cask must be placed in a special cellar under the eye of the authorities. It has two locks; one key is held by the producer, the other key by the government. Neither party can enter the aging cellar without the other.” Casks in vintage cellars are wax sealed by a representative of the BNIC to stop unauthorized tampering, and a member of the BNIC needs to be present every time the wax is broken…for every… single… nosing… tasting… looksie… etc.
The last interesting quote in the LA Times article comes from Darrel Corti (from Corti Brothers), who said that “people didn’t take vintage age statements seriously…pressure to issue vintaged cognac came from armagnac, cognac's great rival among French premium brandy regions…armagnac producers…had less stringent regulations about the use of vintages…provided you stated that the product was aged at least seven years (in barrel)." Corti stated that vintage-dated armagnacs appealed to people who wanted a beverage from their birth year but were born in bad vintages for red wine.
So, there’s the history and rules involving vintage-dated cognac. Which leaves us with the question of what “lot” means? Well, I can’t find any BNIC regulations or information on the use of the term “lot.” It seems that “lot” is a fallback term used by producers that don’t want to jump through the cumbersome and tedious BNIC vintage-dating hoops but still want to market some kind of date to their consumers. So, in reality, when you see “lot” and two digits afterwards, those two digits could mean that the oldest cognac in a blend is from that year, or it could be a specific vintage-year cognac and the producer didn't want to give the BNIC a key to their house. Those numbers could also be completely nonsensical bullshit. Lucky us!
Looking into this has left me with a few thoughts about vintage-dating. First, the complete abolishment of vintage-dating and later reinstatement, but with onerous rules, tells me that there must be some shady actors in cognac; the BNIC does not trust people to toe the line – they want a fucking key to the garage to see what’s going on if you’re going to vintage-date. Second, I wonder if vintage-dated cognac barrels that are sealed with wax and resting in vintage cellars can be topped off with cognac from the same vintage that is being stored in the same vintage cellar? I imagine so, but it’s something I’ll ask around about. And finally, I wonder how much marketing deception is going on with the use of the term “lot.” Is its use a way to keep the meat inspectors away from the jungle so that cognac producers can slap whatever label they want on the bottle? Or are the BNIC regulations such a pain that its just easier for producers to use “lot” and the term isn’t a common deception, but rather it is used out of convenience? Just some late-night wonders…
Currently, the BNIC regulates vintage-dated cognac and how a cognac can be classified as a vintage cognac. Per the BNIC website: a vintage Year is the “date that indicates the vintage year of the grape that was used for Cognac production. In the Cognac Region, the eaux-de-vie that have aged in vintage year cellars or in sealed casks are counted in vintage years.” A vintage cellar is a “cellar where the vintage eaux-de-vie are stored for their ageing process. This cellar is closed with two keys; and one of them is given to the BNIC.”
So, in the modern era, to be labeled as a vintage cognac, the grapes used in production must all be from the same production year and the barrel must be stored in a vintage cellar where the producer and the BNIC possess a key.
The last sentence on the Delamain website caught my eye. Is vintage cognac a recent development under French law? That seemed very strange because I have seen very old bottles of cognac sporting vintage labels loud-and-proud right on the front of the bottle. As I dug around the web, I found a fantastic “vintage” LA Times article from 1994 that really broke down the usage of “vintage” and its patchwork application and meaning in cognac.
Per the LA Times article, prior to 1961, vintage dating was allowed. In 1961, the BNIC prohibited the use of vintage-dating of cognacs. The reason for the prohibition was two-fold: there were irregularities with vintages, i.e., producers were lying about vintage years, and also the focus of cognac turned more towards blending. Despite the prohibition on vintage-dating bottles, there was one interesting workaround for some cognac bottlers; dated cognac barrels that were sent to British wine merchants (think Berry Brothers) could be labeled as vintage-dated cognac. Apparently, the Brits didn’t care what the French rules prescribed, and the history of those two countries is littered with similar examples of their contempt and disregard of each other.
In 1988, the BNIC ended the prohibition on vintage-dated cognac, but even so, the issue of vintage-dating fraud didn’t go away. In 1994, the thought was the advent of carbon dating would keep producers honest; now that we’re in the future, we can point and laugh at history's ideas. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I can only thing of a handful of instances when carbon dating was used to verify potentially fraudulent booze (a few stupidly priced Macallans, at least from what I’ve read) - I don't think its a common thing in the 21st century.
With the reinstatement of vintage-dated cognac, the BNIC established a process of parsing out and maintaining cognac destined for vintage-dating: “all vintage Cognacs being held in cask must be placed in a special cellar under the eye of the authorities. It has two locks; one key is held by the producer, the other key by the government. Neither party can enter the aging cellar without the other.” Casks in vintage cellars are wax sealed by a representative of the BNIC to stop unauthorized tampering, and a member of the BNIC needs to be present every time the wax is broken…for every… single… nosing… tasting… looksie… etc.
The last interesting quote in the LA Times article comes from Darrel Corti (from Corti Brothers), who said that “people didn’t take vintage age statements seriously…pressure to issue vintaged cognac came from armagnac, cognac's great rival among French premium brandy regions…armagnac producers…had less stringent regulations about the use of vintages…provided you stated that the product was aged at least seven years (in barrel)." Corti stated that vintage-dated armagnacs appealed to people who wanted a beverage from their birth year but were born in bad vintages for red wine.
So, there’s the history and rules involving vintage-dated cognac. Which leaves us with the question of what “lot” means? Well, I can’t find any BNIC regulations or information on the use of the term “lot.” It seems that “lot” is a fallback term used by producers that don’t want to jump through the cumbersome and tedious BNIC vintage-dating hoops but still want to market some kind of date to their consumers. So, in reality, when you see “lot” and two digits afterwards, those two digits could mean that the oldest cognac in a blend is from that year, or it could be a specific vintage-year cognac and the producer didn't want to give the BNIC a key to their house. Those numbers could also be completely nonsensical bullshit. Lucky us!
Looking into this has left me with a few thoughts about vintage-dating. First, the complete abolishment of vintage-dating and later reinstatement, but with onerous rules, tells me that there must be some shady actors in cognac; the BNIC does not trust people to toe the line – they want a fucking key to the garage to see what’s going on if you’re going to vintage-date. Second, I wonder if vintage-dated cognac barrels that are sealed with wax and resting in vintage cellars can be topped off with cognac from the same vintage that is being stored in the same vintage cellar? I imagine so, but it’s something I’ll ask around about. And finally, I wonder how much marketing deception is going on with the use of the term “lot.” Is its use a way to keep the meat inspectors away from the jungle so that cognac producers can slap whatever label they want on the bottle? Or are the BNIC regulations such a pain that its just easier for producers to use “lot” and the term isn’t a common deception, but rather it is used out of convenience? Just some late-night wonders…
Links
http://www.bnic.fr/cognac/_en/modules/cognac_glossaire/cognac_glossaire.aspx
http://www.kobrandwineandspirits.com/portfolio/product/delamain_cognac_single_cask_single_estate_vintage_cognac
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-28/food/fo-20644_1_cognac-producers
P.S. I've tried to find an official BNIC rule book online but my Google skills are apparently lacking. If/when I find one, I'll post it in the links section.
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