Courvoisier Connoisseur Collection with Declared Age Statement in Canada

Beam Global Spirits & Wines, the owner of Courvoisier Cognac is launching the first cognacs with declared age statements “a la mode” of whiskies. These are not vintages nor they are the first declared aged cognacs in Canada, but precisely the first “declared age” cognacs marketed in Canada by one of the four major cognac houses (i.e., Courvoisier being the 4th, far away in volume behind Remy Martin). Being large does not make you better but it helps in getting you to do big things. It is a big thing for a cognac maker to engage in a long-term production of declared age cognacs. In the opinions of many master cellars it is something almost impossible to do because one would have to go through so many obstacles such as administrative, customs, cellar management, blendings, stocks, sourcing, etc… It is actually not necessary to make a cognac better to have it warrantied within a certain age systematically. What it really does is help consumers, particularly “whisky drinkers” to compare against whyskies, or have some objective measures of age, etc… The problem is that whiskies, for instance Scotch Whyskies do not have to be 12 years old to be declared “12 YO”. But in fact, only 50% of the whisky blend (blend or not) in the bottle will have to be 12 YO. When in cognac to be declared 12 YO, the youngest age in the bottle will have to be 12 YO. When you think about it, this makes a huge difference. Another interesting fact, is that they have made the bottles look like an oldie, classic, perhaps even kind of similar to traditional “vintages”. This is another risk as one may have noticed that this is the look that has slowly disappeared from the product of the four cognac makers.

We will keep on eye on how this develops and we will report to our faithful readers how it unfolds!
Learn more at:

http://tinyurl.com/3lkr3yo

and  http://tinyurl.com/3efvqtd