Cognac: The Seductive Saga of the World's Most Coveted Spirit
Cognac: The Seductive Saga of the World's Most Coveted Spirit
by Kyle Jarrard
John Wiley and Sons, $195
A quarter century ago, Hong Kong was a goldmine for salesmen of fine cognac. At every wedding banquet and corporate feast, bottles of the expensive French spirit were on the table. People drank it with gusto. Such was the success of persuasive marketing that for a golden decade, Hongkongers bought more cognac than the French: we guzzled an astonishing 18 million bottles in 1993. It was fashionable. It was said to enhance the sex drive. The more expensive the drop, the more eagerly did its fans dig into their pockets to pay extravagant prices for fancy bottles. Then health concerns and education about sophisticated drinking caused a dramatic change in taste. Suddenly red wine replaced spirits. Cognac sales collapsed.
Hong Kong is mentioned only in passing in this otherwise encyclopedic history of what has been called the 'brandy of the gods'. But everything else anyone ever wanted to know about cognac seems to be covered in great depth by Kyle Jarrard, an American journalist who has lived in France for 20 years. Part of that time was spent in the Cognac region in southwestern France and Jarrard seemed to have sipped and appreciated his fair share of the product. He certainly knows about it. And he writes with clarity and a welcome unpretentious breeziness.
What I most appreciate about the book is the historical aspect of the brandy trade, the geography, lore and romance not only of cognac but of the region and its past. This is more than a book about the history of a distilled liquor made from pale white wine. I enjoyed particularly the author's vivid description of how over millions of years, the land was formed. Countless tiny life forms lived and died, and their bodies formed layers of hard limestone hundreds of metres thick. The ice ages came and went. Continents drifted and collided. Mountains rose and fell. Finally, man came and planted grapes. It is poetry.