Time is of the essence

We move through silent streets walled by shuttered houses and closed stores. I know that the French leave en masse in August, but in Cognac the ritual seems also to extend to wintertime. Even the landscape seems somnambulant. Skeletal vines whose cordons point crabbed fingers towards where the sun should be line the roadsides. Yet there is life. Something is stirring in the region’s black, mould-covered, thick-walled chais.

At the bottom of a set of worn stone steps in Remy-Martin’s Domaine de Grollet is a collection of large and clearly ancient casks. It is here where the blend of Cognacs which comprise the house’s iconic prestige blend Louis XIII spends the final four years of its life. A sample is drawn, glasses are filled.

As it wets the lips, so it triggers a rush of images in the mind which go beyond simply ‘tasting’ and into a realm where the liquid seems to be a living entity. This isn’t simply a drink where you can pick out fruit or spice or oak, this becomes a potent distillation of time. With any wood-aged spirit you are to some extent tasting the past, this is the most intense example with a palpable physicality — your tongue touched the rain-sodden lily of the valley and jasmine, the coats in the furrier’s cupboard brushed against your cheek as cigar smoke wreathed around your nose. It deepened, the pictures becoming more complex. After five minutes of silence, we look at each other and shake our heads. ‘Proust would have a ball with this,’ I mutter to my companion.

Outside once more, in chill midnight air, the walls of the chateau have been lit with two enormous clock faces. The point is well-made. The essence of Cognac is time.