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Tag: Christmas Cognac

Christmas Gift Guides For Him & For Her

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It is that time of year when we are all looking for Christmas gift ideas. What to buy the person who has everything? Or the person you really want to treat? Well, to help a little with your festive shopping we have put together some Gift Guides for Him & Her. We have lots of wonderful, special products on our website but here are a few of our favourites:

For Him

Gift Guide

Toutain Reserve 3 Year Old Calvados Distilled, naturally fermented ciders are aged in French oak casks to produce a calvados with a strong palate and a lingering flavour of cooked apples. £39.30

Hermitage 10 Year Old Grande Champagne Cognac. Flavours of spice and coffee, with pineapple in the background, are characteristic of cognacs from the top cru. Excellent value for one with such a good pedigree. £64.10

Mosgaard Organic Single Malt Pedro Ximenez Cask Whisky. Double matured, first in new French oak casks and then finished in old Pedro Ximenez sherry casks, adding sweetness and a rich, mahogany colour. £67.20

Delord 25 Year Old Bas Armagnac. Aromas of vanilla and cinnamon lead to flavours of coffee, cocoa and bitter oranges and a long finish with notes of walnut and almond. £83.05

Hermitage 25 Year Old Grande Champagne Cognac. This is a particularly complex cognac that has been aged for 25 years in Limousin oak barrels. It has a multitude of aromas and flavours including spices and roasted nuts. £135.60

For Her

Dupont Dream Calvados Liqueur. Calvados cream liqueur with clean appley flavour, delicious and much more appealing than the popularly branded whisky cream liqueurs. £31.80

Mosgaard Organic Tangerine Gin. Sweet and floral organic tangerine gin made from fresh tangerines. The citrus package, gives it a more aromatic expression and is balanced with lime. £39.60

Chateau de Bordeneuve La Grande Josiane, Orange Armagnac Liqueur. A subtle alliance between the fullness and strength of Bas Armagnac and the softness and perfume of bitter oranges meticulously selected for their maturity.  £43.80

Nusbaumer 20 Year Old Reserve Poire William Eau de Vie (Pear). This pear brandy is made from small, red Williams pears that grow on hillsides with excellent sun exposure. Aged for 20 years, it is one of the best we have tasted. £84.00

Dupont Pomme Captive Pays d’Auge Calvados. This apple, macerating in calvados, is created in the spring when a carafe is suspended from the branch of the apple tree as soon as the first little apple appears; it then continues to grow inside. £127.80

Christmas Gifts for Under £200

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For those who would like to spend just a little bit more, here are our suggestions for 5 Christmas Gifts that can be purchased for under £200.  Enjoy the read!

Under £200Hermitage Provenance 25 Grande Champagne Cognac £126.72  Cognacs from the Grande Champagne age very slowly producing flavours such as roasted nuts, rich fruits and citrus. This cognac’s wonderfully complex flavours are a result of having been kept in oak barrels, in damp cellars, for over 25 years.

Dupont 20 Year Old Pays d’Age Calvados £147.24  This wonderful calvados is made from 80% bittersweet apples and 20% acidic apples and has been aged for over 20 years in a wooden vat and toasted oak barrels.  Well balanced with long and intense flavours of fruit and toasted hazelnuts.

Hermitage 30 Year Old Grande Champagne Cognac  £163.86  Thirty years of oak ageing ensures this cognac has far more intense flavour and complexity than the big commercial blends.  It has a rich nutty, spice and coffee flavour with mature pineapple background.

Chateau du Breuil 20 Year Old Pays d’Age Calvados  £164.94  A taste of sweet baked apples with an overindulgent richness. There are 5 apple varieties with only 20% being picked from the tree, the remainder are fallen apples with higher sugar content.

Castarede 1972 Bas Armagnac  £164.94  All of Castarède’s armagnacs come from the top cru, Bas Armagnac, which produces light, fruity, delicate and highly reputed eaux de vie, from which the armagnacs are distilled.  Elegant and refined with flavours of dried fruits, bread pudding, toffee and sweet spices.

More Christmas Suggestions

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IChristmas Suggestionsf you’re looking for Christmas Suggestions you will have found two recommendations for Hermitage Cognacs in the press last week.  Olly Smith, well known wines and spirits journalist and television presenter featured our Hermitage 20 Year Old Grande Champagne Cognac in the Mail on Sunday magazine last weekend.  “Imagine a giant pineapple given a toffee-apple dip and you get this ultimate festive spirit, hugely divergent in its range of flavours” he said.

Richard Woodard, writing in Decanter, also featured Hermitage in his ‘Best Cognacs for Christmas 2021‘.  In describing our award-winning Hermitage 50 Year Old Grande Champagne Cognac he wrote:

“It’s frankly astonishing that a Cognac can be as vibrant and full of pep as this after five decades in cask, but David Baker’s Hermitage Cognacs are all about that kind of age-defying quality. From Segonzac in the heart of Grande Champagne, this softly spoken, quietly powerful Cognac is perfumed, structured and endlessly complex. Alc 44%”

 

Choose The Right Christmas Cognac

Posted / in Brandy Education, News and tagged , , , ,

Christmas CognacThis Christmas the big cognac houses will tell you in very general terms why you should buy their Christmas Cognac either for yourself, or as a gift. The differences in taste and price between one and another will not be significant.   The attractive presentation of each cognac will, however, undoubtedly attract millions of customers, but the question I would ask is:

“Do I want to buy an attractive looking presentation or, do I want to buy a cognac that is memorable for its taste and quality and provides great satisfaction when it is drunk?”

To answer this let’s look at the facts behind the production and ageing of blended and single estate cognacs. In order to meet production and sales objectives the large cognac houses blend hundreds of different, young cognacs, made by hundreds or even thousands of different producers.  This produces generic blends referred to as VS, VSOP or XO where the highest quality is only required to have been in the barrel, ageing, for ten years.  The youthfulness of these blended cognacs means that sugar syrup and caramel will have to be added to hide their fiery qualities.

Single estate cognacs, on the other hand, come from a single producer who ages his cognacs in his own cellar.  They will often carry an indication of barrel age, which is likely to be significantly older than ten years and as a result, most will not contain any sugar syrup or caramel.

At Hermitage we take the selection of our cognacs further. We seek pure cognacs from the top cru, Grande Champagne, that have been aged for a minimum of ten years. Hermitage Cognacs are also carefully selected for their individual qualities, lack of fieriness (as this improves balance), and great taste. They don’t cost any more than the heavily blended VSOPs or XOs, but they are a little more difficult to find.  Each one must meet our very high standards and may only come as a single batch of a few hundred bottles.

“So, will you buy your cognac this Christmas for the shape of the bottle or the bottle’s contents?”