Dudognon Heritage 40 Year Old Cognac

Forty years in Limousin oak and nothing added at bottling: no caramel, no sugar syrup, no boisé. All the sweetness and depth in this Grande Champagne Cognac comes from the fruit and the time. That's not how most old Cognac reaches the shelf, and it's why this one comes out lighter in colour than you'd expect for its age. The Dudognon family has grown grapes in Lignières-Sonneville, about eleven miles southeast of the town of Cognac, since 1776. They distill only grapes from their own parcels. Raymond Dudognon passed his distilling know-how to his daughter Claudine, who now runs the estate with her husband Gerald Buraud and their son Pierre. They still make distillation calls glass in hand rather than by instrument. Grande Champagne's Campanian chalk is known for spirits with great length, and four decades in 350-litre barrels (about eight months in new oak, then older casks) have had plenty of time to build on that. Think about what forty-year-old Cognac usually costs and this is one of the great values in brown spirits, made to be poured slowly after dinner rather than locked away.