Wine Enthusiast: Why Spanish Brandy Needs a Rebrand

There are many garish bottles on liquor store shelves, but none do more peacocking than Brandy de Jerez. Surely, you’ve noticed the bottles I’m talking about—even if, like most people, you’ve never bought one. Most Spanish brandies boast crimson or gold labels. One dons a pretty ribbon, while a rival sports an intricate faux-gilded pattern. Some are affixed with regal wax seals, while others announce their presence in fancy Renaissance-Faire-ish fonts. Then there are the courtly names themselves: Carlos I, Cardenal Mendoza, Gran Duque d’Alba.

“Subtlety isn’t the middle name of Jerez’s brandy men,” once wrote spirits critic F. Paul Pacult in his encyclopedic guide, Kindred Spirits.

In the past, I’ve described Brandy de Jerez as that buddy who tries just a bit too hard—the one with the flashy watch, the giant belt buckle, the ridiculous gold chain or too much cologne. Sometimes, when I open a bottle, I feel as though I should be wearing a ruffled collar, like a courtier of Philip IV. Regardless, I happen to enjoy Brandy de Jerez. I believe, for instance, that it works better in many classic brandy cocktails than Cognac. But I often feel like the odd one out with this opinion.

My big takeaway? Spanish brandy is in desperate need of a rebrand, and there has mercifully been a small movement toward change in the right direction. But before I get into the signs of hope for Spanish brandy, it’s important to consider the larger state of affairs.

Last year, François Monti, a drinks writer based in Madrid, called out Spanish brandy in his industry newsletter, Jaibol. The rant was prompted by Monti’s outrage over a historic Brandy de Jerez brand’s attempt to reinvent itself as a drink to be mixed with Coca-Cola. Brandy de Jerez, Monti writes, is an appellation “not very clear about where it is going.”

It remains a fact that fewer and fewer people drink Brandy de Jerez. Since 2008, total sales have dropped from 45 million liters to around nine million liters, with consumption dropping 30 percent between 2012 and 2016 alone. During the last decade, exports fell an additional 15%, and things continue to trend downward. Spanish brandy’s largest export markets are now the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea—the latter consuming six times more Brandy de Jerez than the U.S.

Why is this? In his newsletter, Monti minces no words. “Brandy de Jerez does not stand for the quality of its raw material,” he writes. Terroir also means little: “It is very complicated to talk about the terroir of Brandy de Jerez… the vast majority of the raw material comes from outside the [Sherry] triangle,” the historic region bounded by the city of Jerez on the east and to the northwest and southwest respectively, the ports of Sanlúcar de Barrameda and El Puerto de Santa Maria.

It’s hard to say what terroir (or transparency) even means for Brandy de Jerez. The name itself invokes the city in Andalucía that’s famous for Sherry. But the grape mostly used for the brandy is not Palomino (as with Sherry) but Airen, an insipid neutral grape said to be the most planted in the world, grown mostly on agribusiness vineyards in La Mancha. Most of the brandy is distilled outside of the Sherry triangle, what the regulatory council calls the “processing zone,” before it comes to age in the vast solera cellars back in Jerez. By law, Brandy de Jerez must age in Sherry barrels, but there’s little differentiation between brands.

Then there are Spanish brandy’s elevated sugar levels: Up to 35 grams of sugar per liter is allowed. This sweetness goes against the current consumer demands for drier spirits.

Finally, Monti called out the dated, stodgy brand image:

“Emperors, cardinals, aristocrats, great battles of Catholicism: the names and image of some of the brands are an obstacle for a more modern consumer. Carlos I, a brand that has made a great effort to modernize its image and that has a clear strategy of going towards the premium segment, still mentions on its website ‘Spirit of Conquest.’ ¡Ay!”

It adds up to a spirit that the younger generation in Spain sees as hopelessly old-fashioned, the drink of their grandfathers—with a cringe-y legacy of being cosa de hombres (“a man thing”) as this television ad for Soberano from the 1960s suggests. (Even darker was this horrible ad.)

All of this is a shame. I have been a big advocate for Spanish brandy over the years. Back in 2015, Monti and I actually presented a panel on the spirit at Tales of the Cocktail. Even then, we spoke about the same challenges that Brandy de Jerez faces today, which tells you how little has changed in the past eight years.

At the time, we implored brands to re-evaluate the high sugar content and additives in a world that wants products that are dry and additive free. We bemoaned the low level of alcohol by volume. Most of it is imported into the U.S. at just 40%, but much of what’s sold in Spain and elsewhere falls below even that, down to 36% abv. We even wore ruffled collars to underscore silliness and outdatedness of the category’s imagery.

In Monti’s article, the last straw for him was the suggestion of combining brandy with Coca-Cola, pushed by one big brand’s marketing department. He pointed out a similarly misguided marketing attempt a decade ago by the producers of Calvados, a similarly troubled spirit, who tried to push something called the Calvados Tonic. In France, Calvados Tonic was an unmitigated failure as a marketing campaign. The Spanish-brandy-and-cola, I believe, will meet the same fate. “One of the most uncomfortable truths in the spirits industry is that hardly any recent trends have been created by brands,” Monti notes.

The real challenge for Brandy de Jerez is to understand what premium spirits drinkers really want. But there are signs of hope in a growing number of smaller producers who are more transparent about origin and aging.

Among them is a project by Sherry negociant Equipo Navazos, which has partnered with importer Nicolas Palazzi of PM Spirits to release a series of single-cask brandies, all without additives and bottled at cask strength.

On several occasions, I’ve tasted these brandies from the barrel with Eduardo Oreja of Equipo Navazos. These are racy, elegant, dry brandies that still retain the rich, dried fruit and full-bodied characteristics of classic Brandy de Jerez. This is revolutionary stuff.

“I had always associated Spanish brandy with some subpar version of Henny VS, some dark syrupy crap that makes the floor sticky if you drop some,” says Palazzi. That was before he tasted Equipo Navazos’ casks. “My mind was blown. I realized that at its core the additive-free product can be magnificent.”

I love the Navazos Palazzi 7-year-old aged in amontillado cask. This unique brandy was made from 100% Pardina (an obscure grape I didn’t know) and bottled at cask strength, 42.5% abv. You can find it here and here for $80. There are also still a few rare bottles of the stunning Navazos Palazzi fino Sherry cask floating around (such as here), also for around $80. For a premium brandy, something like this under $100 is well worth grabbing.

Navazos Palazzi’s most recent brandy release is aged in Pedro Ximenéz casks (bottled at 43% abv) is delicious, rounder and darker than the amontillado or fino casks. Though the cask is part of a classic solera, the average age of the brandy is at least 35 years old. It’s slightly pricier, at around $130 per bottle.

While those single-cask selections may represent the zenith of Brandy de Jerez production, I still also recommend checking out a few of the classic expressions for comparison. I’ve always liked Lepanto Solera Gran Reserva, which at under $50 is a very good value, and relatively easy to find. Instead of Airen, Lepanto uses the same Palomino grape from which Sherry is made. The result is a brighter, nuttier and more complex brandy than most in the category.

And if I ever want to remind myself what old-school Spanish brandy is like (complete with garish label and packaging) I go for the Gran Duque d’Alba. The Duke brings all that big sweet, ripe, creamy, molasses flavor, though you can still feel the attractive notes of the Sherry cask. For $40, it’s a solid cocktail pour.

Mix it in the classic brandy cocktails we talked about a few weeks ago and see for yourself. My personal favorite is a drink I call the Little Madrid (recipe below). With all apologies to my colleague Monti in Madrid, you might also even enjoy it with a Coca-Cola.

Everyday Drinking: Is Armagnac The New Bourbon? Or Is It The New Mezcal?

An exercise in reading beyond the headline. Plus, my picks and tasting notes on 16 bottles for your holiday splurge.

People often ask me, “What’s the difference between Cognac and Armagnac?” (Yes, I exist in incredibly nerdy spaces). To be honest, there as many similarities as differences. They’re both brandies made from grapes, often the same grapes. They’re both made in southwest France, less than three hours drive from one another. At the top end, they’re both expensive. But there are key differences, both technical and cultural. Below, I’ve posted my Armagnac 101.

More than anything, Cognac is bigger than Armagnac. Much bigger. Cognac represents a $4 billion market global market, with 225 million bottles sold each year. Meanwhile, Armagnac sells around 5 million bottles in a year. That means you don’t have huge multinational players like Hennessy or Rémy Martin in Armagnac. Instead, it’s mostly smaller family estates. Most don’t even own stills, but rely on itinerant distillers going from house to house after harvest and fermentation. There simply isn’t as much Armagnac in the world.

That scarcity and local grassroots production is why people often make this analogy: Armagnac is to Cognac what mezcal is to tequila. In the craft spirits world—where mezcal has cool, trendy, insider buzz—that’s not a bad place for Armagnac to be.

That seems to be what some in the industry are banking on. For instance, in late 2021, the venerable brand Marquis de Montesquiou, one of Armagnac’s largest producers, was bought from Pernot Ricard by Alexander Stein, the entrepreneur who created Monkey 47 Gin—which Stein had previously sold to Pernod Ricard. “He thinks Armagnac is the new mezcal,” said Jean-Francois Bonnete, the president of BCI, which imports Marquis de Montesquiou. It will be interesting to see how the brand, which has slipped in quality, will evolve under Stein.

Meanwhile, Stein isn’t the only industry bigwig who’s invested in the region. And a some of the other players don’t see Armagnac as the new mezcal. Rather, they’re banking on it being the new bourbon.

A few years ago, Raj Bhakta, one of the founders of Whistle Pig whiskey, bought the entire stock of a traditional Armagnac house, Ryst Dupeyron. In 2021, Bhakta told me that he’d “transferred the majority of it to Vermont,” where it would be finished in Islay whisky barrels. He released the blends a barrel at a time. “Technically it is Armagnac, but I’m not calling it Armagnac,” Bhakta told me at the time. Still, all of his promotional material clearly mentions Armagnac as the spirit’s place of origin.

Bkakta is clearly trying to appeal to a certain kind of American whiskey drinker, to blow them away with a 50-year age statement on the label. “The American whiskey drinking is dying for something new. He just doesn’t know it yet,” he told me in 2021. But Bkakta made clear he has little intention of educating his bourbon bros on Armagnac when he declared: “Armagnac just doesn’t have much brand value.” I mean, that’s some serious hubris there. But I guess it’s no less arrogrant than taking something a family aged for five decades in the French countryside and sticking in a Islay whiskey barrel for a few months to, ahem, “finish” it.

I’ve written before about this whiskey-fication of Armagnac. I’m very clearly on the record as saying this is not a good thing.

Nicolas Palazzi of PM Spirits, which imports a number of top Armagnacs, summed up the current market like this:

“There’s more Armagnac being sold, but it’s a very specific kind of Armagnac sold to a specific kind of buyer. We’re talking about Armagnac that’s very extracted, heavier on the wood, more powerful, more vanilla. So it’s not very different than the whiskey that people are drinking. We’re selling a lot less classical Armagnac.”

In other words: Armagnac that tastes like bourbon. Still the big question for Armagnac in the U.S. is whether or not whiskey drinkers—tired of ridiculous bourbon prices—will embrace brandies they likely can’t pronounce.

When I think and talk about Armagnac, I am a million miles away from the whiskey market. Gascony is a rustic, agricultural place of small towns that’s famous (or infamous) for the ducks and geese raised for foie gras (more than once been I’ve been served a “salad” in Gascony that was literally all meat). I posted recently about my pilgrimage to some revered small estates. Armagnac is a fragile place, and there is legitimate worry about whether it can handle becoming the new bourbon or the new mezcal.

We love the allure of drinking from decades-old barrels that a négociant—a treasure hunter—has discovered and procured from an elderly grower, or a widow. But those barrels often represent the end of a multi-generational wine-growing family. The numbers don’t lie: In 50 years, the total vineyard area of Armagnac has shrunk from 10,000 to 2,000 hectares. “This tradition is dying,” says Lili de Montal, at Château Arton, with around 40 hectares in Haut-Armagnac. “It’s not an overstatement to say it’s a disaster.”

A few weeks ago, I went to a tasting of Château de Laubade in New York, hosted by Denis Lesgourgues, whose family has run the estate for three generations. It was a small group, mostly people from the trade, and I thought Lesgourgues’ presentation was a good model for how Armagnac might move forward into an uncharted market.

Among the samples, we tasted an experimental bottling made from the rare plant de graisse grape, as well as Laubade’s new 21-year-old expression. That age statement is itself not common. “You don’t see a lot of age statements in Armagnac,” Lesgourgues said, adding: “We’ve been thinking about whiskey drinkers. The price of 21-year-old whiskey is very high. So we feel this is a chance for whiskey drinkers to try a 21-year-old Armagnac.”

I’ve known Lesgourgues for about a decade, and back in 2021, he and I had a disagreement over a Armagnac he released that was finished in Bardstown bourbon barrels. His new 21-year-old feels like a much better approach to meet the whiskey drinker with an Armagnac that’s still got the classic profile. (I recommend it below in my bottle picks).

After the tasting, everyone in attendance split into groups and we blended our own Armagnac from the 2008 vintage from aged samples of four specific grapes: ugni blanc, baco, colombard, and plant de graisse. Besides being fun (my team of course made the best blend; I got an embossed certificate!) the exercise focused attention on the raw ingredients, the grapes and the wine. It drove home to the people in attendance just how different Armagnac is from nearly any other spirit.

BRANDY - From Cognac to California, the historic spirit’s influence runs deep.

JUICY FRUIT

From vineyard or orchard to bottle and bar, brandy’s influence runs deep.

Cognac, Armagnac, applejack, schnapps—in whichever form brandy is found, these spirits made from fruit have no parallel in the glass. While whisk(e)y, tequila, and rum get lots of love these days (deservedly so) from cocktail lovers and spirits drinkers, brandy is evolving and emerging on its own terms, slowly building a fan base to take this timeless spirit into the future.

We’re taking a closer look at today’s world of brandy—the ways it’s made and appreciated around the world, the details behind its complex production, and the reasons it should be the next bottle you reach for when cocktail hour rolls around.

Nicolas Palazzi

Bordeaux-born and Brooklyn based, Palazzi is the importer behind PM Spirits, specializing in independent spirits such as L’Encantada Armagnac, Cognac Frapin, and Cobrafire eau-de-vie de raisin.

“Something that’s really cool is when you’re in a brandy cellar, with 50, 60, 100 casks in front of you; even if they’re from the same batch of distillation, every cask is its own world. You could taste 15 casks distilled the same day, and you’ll find tremendous differences between them—whereas something like bourbon would be very consistent. There’s so much aroma and flavor profile available in brandy. If someone thinks Cognac is just one thing and it’s boring or they don’t like it, I assure you, I can find a single-cask Cognac that’ll blow your socks off. It’s a world that deserves to be discovered, for sure.”