By cognac-expert:
ABV: 42.8 %
Growth Area: Grande Champagne
Village: Marancheville, Juillac le Coq
Grape Variety: Ugni Blanc
Bottle size: 70 cl
Lot: L45-GC10
Cask: N°60L1, N°60L2, N°60L3
Cask Volume: Three 60L Mini Casks
Natural: No additives, non-chill filtered
Date of last reduction: 2012
Limited Edition: 175 bottles
The second edition of L’ESSENTIEL Season 2 has arrived, this time in direct collaboration with Cognac Marancheville.
This wonderfully mature Cognac comes from vines situated in the heart of the Grande Champagne, notably the communes of Julliac-le-Coq and Marancheville. The terroir is textbook Grande Champagne terroir: Campanian chalk, a chalky limestone soil not unlike the soils found in the Champagne region’s Montagne de Reims and Côte des Blancs. But we’re not talking about bubbly Champagne here. This is Cognac.
Laurent and Gregoire of Cognac Marancheville are vignerons and professional distillers by trade. The vast majority of their time is spent looking after their hectares of vines, harvesting, and then distilling the wines made from each year’s harvest. Cognac blending under their own Marancheville brand is only a mere fraction of what they do. In fact, depending on the year, they will only keep 1-3% of their eaux-de-vie to go into barrel and become part of their personal stock. The other 97-99% of the eaux-de-vie is sold off to a big house under contract. Gregoire states, “It’s from our personal stock that we make all of our blends and Cognacs for Marancheville.” Including this L’ESSENTIEL A45 Marancheville.
What is it about this particular Cognac that first caught our attention? Easy. 60 liter barrels. The Cognac for this L’ESSENTIEL A45 Marancheville all come from three 60 liter barrels. The little casks were put together with staves of old “roux” barrels. This is quite unique in that the 60 liter size is uncommon in the region and for the fact that the barrels were created out of old, previously used barrel staves, more on that below.
When asked what impact such a small barrel has on the aging process Gregoire responded, “The aging process is accelerated because the ratio of the surface area of liquid to the barrel volume is very high. Consequently, the evaporation is higher than in a classic barrel. This strong evaporation is a necessary evil for a quality aging process.” Note that for Marancheville, like with most other Cognac producers, the standard barrel size is 350 to 400 liters. A 60 liter barrel is a small fraction of the size of a typical barrel.
