isconsin has had a long standing love affair with brandy and, while it has cooled considerably from its hay day, it still remains true that more brandy is sold and consumed in Wisconsin than in any other state. In fact, in the 1960s, Wisconsinites accounted for 49% of all brandy consumed in the United States! Amazingly, your typical Wisconsin resident consumed 12 times more brandy than the average American. While brandy had seen a rather steep decline in popularity over the last 10 years, recently there has been evidence of resurgence. Classic cocktails are becoming increasingly popular and the average consumer’s pallet has become more diverse and sophisticated – more like to how it was 40 or 50 years ago.

 

If brandy is due for a comeback, Alcoholmanac Magazine refuses to take a back seat! It is for that reason, and the simple fact that few spirits warm you better on a cold Wisconsin evening, that we chose brandy as our second featured spirit.

 

Brandy, from the Dutch word meaning “burnt wine,” is a distilled spirit made from fermented fruit juice, typically a wine. While it is often made from wine, very few characteristics remain from the original beverage. This is due to the heating and distilling process that brandy goes through. During this process, chemical changes take place in the fermented fruit juice, significantly altering most of its characteristics.

 

AROMA

Connoisseurs will tell you that different aromas can be detected from a single brandy at different distances and different times. The first wave of aroma is usually detected at about 5 cm from the glass. This aroma is usually that of light vanilla. The second wave happens as your nose reaches the edge of the glass. This wave brings out the fruity, woody, nutty and floral characters in the spirit, as well as the obvious alcohol. The third wave, as your nose is in the glass, brings out any remaining characteristics of the original fermented beverage, assuming you can tolerate the burning alcohol aroma. The final aromatic experience associated with brandy comes after the beverage is gone. A fourth unique aroma can be detected from the empty glass for, in the case of the oldest brandies, as long as several days!

 

Regional Variety

Brandy is a diverse spirit. Just as wine or other fermented juices can taste and feel different on the pallet, so is it true with brandy. Each brandy producing region of the world has a different favored methodology of producing brandy, and while there is certainly diversity amongst brandies produced from the same region, certain characteristics tend to remain true.

French Brandies

Many brandy connoisseurs would never forgive us if we didn’t start our small tour of brandies with the French. Brandies produced here are often considered some of the best in the world. There are two major types of brandy produced in France – Armagnac and Cognac. Both Armagnac and Cognac, like Champagne, are specific to regions in France. No brandy can be called an Armagnac unless it is produced in the Armagnac region of France and produced in the traditional Armagnac fashion. The same is true for Cognac, only qualifying region this time is Cognac, France.

 

While Armagnac is the oldest style of brandy in France, we’re going to focus on the widely considered “king of brandies,” Cognac. Cognac is, by and large, the smoothest and best balanced brandy style in the world. Cognac, and its brother Armagnac, are both brandy blends, taking the best brandies from the region and combining them into the blender’s preferred balance.

 

We tasted Pierre Ferrand’s 1er Cru Du Cognac and found it to be everything we hoped for and more. It was, as expected, our favorite brandy of the bunch. It had an aroma of berries and the finish tasted lightly of cherries. Buyers beware, however; while Cognac is amongst the best brandy one can get, you’ll pay for every drop. This single bottle of Cognac cost us almost as much as the other three bottles combined, and this was one of the affordable options!

Spanish Brandies

The most famous type of brandy in Spain is the Brandy De Jerez. Brandies made in this style are made by the Sherry houses surrounding the city of Jerez and are aged oak casks formerly containing sherry. It is another grape brandy, but it very rarely use grapes from the region of Jerez – the Sherry grapes grown there are considered too valuable for brandy production. Instead, grapes are shipped in to Jerez from other grape producing regions of Spain. Another unique aspect of Brandy De Jerez is in the way it is aged. Distillers in this region use a solera system of aging similar to that used to age Sherries. While the whole system is too long to describe here, basically the distiller draws off some of the oldest brandy and uses it to mix with younger and younger brandies so as to speed up the maturation of the brandy. In this way, brandies from this region tend to be blends of several vintages.

 

We, of course, sampled a brandy made in this style – Lustau Brandy De Jerez Solera. This brandy was … robust. The aroma was overwhelmingly of alcohol and it was difficult to get beyond that. Brandies from this region tend to be sweeter than most and perhaps that was true, but we found this to be the harshest brandy we tasted. It was almost unpleasant. Perhaps it is the Sherry barrels or perhaps it is the sped up maturation, but something about this style was not to our taste. If, however, you enjoy sharp and complex flavors, this might be for you. As always, we encourage you to try it and find your own flavor preferences.

American Brandies

American brandy is almost exclusively produced in California and made from the grapes that are produced there. As there is no governing body enforcing the grape varietals that go into making American brandy, it is the most diverse in both quality and taste. In short, American brandy can be either very good or quite bad.

 

We sampled Korbel brandy as our sample of American brandy. Korbel brandy is an American staple. The Korbel distillery produces grapes specifically for its brandy. They then ferment the grapes to produce wine, distill the young wines and then age the newly produced brandy in small charred oak barrels. The charred oak aging process is what gives Korbel brandy its distinct dark color and mellow (for a brandy) flavor. Its aroma was nutty and woody and the taste had light fruit undertones. Korbel is one of the better American brandies and, with a very affordable price point, well worth picking up.

Apple & Other Fruit Brandies

Brandy need not be made from wine. It can also be made from virtually any fermented fruit juice. Apple brandy, or applejack as it was referred to in colonial times (and still is today in some places), is the most common form of “other fruit” brandy. Apple brandy is thought to be the oldest distilled spirit in America and applejack distilleries were owned by many wealthy families of Colonial America including
George Washington.

 

We sampled an applejack for this leg of our brandy exploration. Let me rephrase that, we sampled THE Applejack from the famous Laird distillery in New Jersey – the very same distillery from which George Washington received his recipe. Laird & Company is the oldest family-run distillery in America and produces what is often considered the staple for apple brandy. Laird’s Applejack is a smooth blend of 35% apple brandy and 65% neutral grain spirit. The aroma is distinctly apple with a light vanilla undertone. The flavor is spicy with a hint of caramel. Surprisingly, we detected very little apple flavor, especially when compared to the aroma. Overall, Laird’s Applejack is a very nice apple brandy and would be good alone or even better as part of a cocktail.