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There’s a popular vision of Cognac that’s all blinged out and dripping: crystal decanters, tasting rooms that look like jewelry stores and five-figure bottlings. This image is dominated by a handful of huge brands everyone recognizes: Hennessy, Martell, Rémy Martin and Courvoisier—the so-called Big Four, which sell nearly 90% of the Cognac consumed worldwide, according to the International Wines and Spirits Record. But there is another side of Cognac, too. One that’s based more on the gritty agricultural reality of the region. I saw it on a cold, gray day last winter at an unassuming farm in the small village of Verrières. This was probably the last place I’d expect to find pricey Cognac, but I was on a barrel hunt with Guilhem Grosperrin, among the new wave of négociants whose limited-edition releases are quickly becoming the most coveted bottles in Cognac. We visited one of the 150 small producers in his network, where Grosperrin crawls around old cellars looking for rare brandies. When we arrived at the farm, four barking dogs rushed out to us, followed by a ruddy-faced septuagenarian who was still dressed from his boar hunt earlier in the day. Cognac is a secretive, rivalrous place and I was introduced to the man in hunting attire as only Marcel, no last name. Marcel eyed me suspiciously, then asked, “Well, does he like to drink?” Grosperrin chuckled and told Marcel that, yes, I liked to drink very much. With the ice broken, we stepped into his dark, dusty cellar to taste from his barrels, which had been aging since as early as the 1980s. “Sorry it’s dirty in here. I haven’t distilled since 2012,” Marcel said. Image Courtesy of Stéphane Charbeau The nonstop luxury messaging from the Big Four makes people forget Cognac’s origin as wine. We sipped liquid from Marcel’s barrels that had begun as grapes in the family’s 10-hectare vineyard, which he picked, pressed, fermented and distilled. It’s a similar story for the roughly 4,300 winegrowers in Cognac, most of whom grow less than 20 hectares specifically for Cognac production. During his career, Marcel sold most of his stock to one Big Four house or another. But he always saved a few special barrels for himself. “What they keep is for pleasure, or patrimony, or as souvenirs, or for reasons that are not necessarily logical,” Grosperrin told me. By age eight, Marcel was able to light the still, which he did in the morning while his father tended to the cows. Marcel remembers a wealthy neighbor who’d been a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II. That man wrote to his family from prison: “Cut down all the trees if you have to, but don’t stop distilling. Distill, distill, distill.” After the war, this guy’s cellar was full, and he became rich. Meanwhile, Marcel’s family had to rebuild its stocks. “The value of money is just in your head,” he said. “But the value of Cognac is solid, and you don’t lose it.” You May Also Like: How the Fall of the Soviet Union Changed Wine Forever Marcel opened a barrel of a 2000 vintage from Grande Champagne. As he poured it into our glasses, he said with a laugh, “Rémy Martin told me, no thank you. They said this barrel wasn’t good enough.” We sipped the liquid, and the three of us fell silent. This was an unbelievably complex and delicious Cognac with layers upon layers of flavors and aromas. Grosperrin closed his eyes. Finally, Marcel broke the silence by saying, “Ooh la la!” Later, Grosperrin told me he’d had his eye on that barrel for a few years, observing how it developed. Now, it seemed like the time to buy. “The big brands, they have no consideration for this kind of thing,” he said. “I can afford to have long talks with a producer over 20 liters.” Finding special casks like these in dusty old cellars is how he makes his living. “I need to be ready to buy a barrel the moment a family is ready to sell,” Grosperrin said. “You buy the cask, you earn the money, then you buy another cask. You will always find good casks. But then you always need even more good casks.” After Alphabet Soup The basics of what Grosperrin is doing is not new in Cognac. Historically, the region is a merchant business, and about 75 percent of stocks are owned by négociants, who buy from smaller producers. Traditionally, those stocks went into various blends, the classic alphabet soup of Cognac classifications: VS, VSOP, XO, Extra, Réserve, Hors d’Age, Napoleon. But the new wave of merchants is doing something quite distinct. “The maker is not the only one with know-how. There is also the guy who can find the good barrels,” said Alexandre Vingtier, respected French spirits critic. Négociants like Grosperrin and Vallein-Tercinier, and importers such as PM Spirits are now focused on single barrels. Even acclaimed small producers like Jean-Luc Pasquet will do special bottlings (via its Trésors de Famille line) of barrels they select from other cellars. “The rules and classifications were made for people who sell in bulk,” said Amy Pasquet, of Jean-Luc Pasquet. Treasured family barrels end up going into mass market products from Hennessy or Rémy Martin. “Those blends are what people locally call a ‘fosse commune,’ a pauper’s grave,” Pasquet said. “We want a bottling that doesn’t erase the character of that single cask.” You May Also Like: How Hybrid Barrels are Changing Your Wine, Beer and Spirits To whiskey drinkers, single-cask offerings may seem like old hat. But it’s a relatively new phenomenon in brandy. Cognac is actually following a model that’s already been successful for Armagnac. Single-barrel Armagnac from négociants like L’Encantada are catching the fancy of American whiskey connoisseurs tired of paying whiskey prices. The problem in Armagnac is that the existing stock of barrels is small and shrinking. That offers an opportunity for Cognac, where there is seemingly endless stock. Though, as Grosperrin points out, “It’s much more complicated to buy a cask here than in Armagnac. In Cognac, the producers are richer, and they don’t need small independent bottlers. They have contracts with the big houses.” It’s still the early stages for the single-barrel Cognac revolution, and we’re just beginning to see these bottles in the U.S. La Maison du Whiskey’s “Through the Grapevine” series was one of the first to appear. PM Spirits has done several limited-edition bottlings, and this year has released rare single-cask offerings from renowned producers Frapin and Remi Landier. Last spring, Grosperrin released bottlings in the U.S. for the first time in several years. Importer Heavenly Spirits has released two single-barrel bottlings from the famed estate Jean Fillioux. Vallein-Tercinier and Jean-Luc Pasquet have plans to bring more of their single-cask offerings into the States. To be clear, at the moment, single-barrel Cognac is still the domain of aficionados, with prices running more than $200 per bottle. But they’re still a fraction of something like Rémy Martin Louis XIII or Hennessy Paradis Imperial (both more than $3,000). Much of the price of those blingy brand names is wrapped up in specially designed decanters. The new wave of single-barrel offerings is something rarer and scarcer. “This is for people who want the unexpected. It’s a different philosophy. It’s outside of the current market,” said Vingtier. Image Courtesy of Stéphane Charbeau Lesser-Known Terroirs Another key difference between this new wave of barrel-hunting négociants and the Big Four is the respect and sensitivity paid to the liquid’s history, and to the people who’ve made it. “These people have worked their entire lives to make Cognac as good as it can be,” said Pasquet. “Give credit where credit is due.” To that end, the original producer’s name—at least the first name—appears on Pasquet’s Trésors de Famille labels, i.e. Le Cognac de Claude, Le Cognac de Régis. “A lot of the people who sell the casks don’t really want to sell them,” Pasquet said. She mentions an elderly woman whom they recently bought casks from: “For her, it was like selling a part of her grandfather. But they needed to fix up the house, so she had to sell.” Each bottle Grosperrin releases has a mini essay on the label describing the provenance and what makes the barrel unique. As an example, he pointed to a sample that had been brought to him by a 75-year-old man. The Cognac came from casks belonging to the man’s brother, recently deceased, that had been distilled after the brother’s first harvest, in 1961. “This was a guy who sold everything, every cask, during his whole life. But he kept two casks from his very first harvest. He kept these casks for 60 years,” Grosperrin said. “It’s not a question of money. That’s not why he’s selling this. It’s very emotional. So, how can I take this and then just blend into an XO? These barrels have to be respected.” You May Also Like: The Differences Between Wine and Whiskey Barrels, Explained A positive side effect of the barrel hunters’ quests is that they’ve had to cast a wide net, scouring lesser-known terroirs of Cognac. Every Cognac fan knows Grande Champagne or Borderies, but Grosperrin, Pasquet and others are sourcing amazing single casks from crus such as Bons Bois and Bois Ordinaires that were previously looked down upon as inferior terroir. All the same, barrel hunting is not an easy or straightforward task. Grosperrin receives a lot of samples, but ultimately buys a very small quantity. It’s also not the end of the aging process. When he buys a cask, it may spend another decade, or more, in his cellar. “It’s easy to buy a cask and bottle it,” he said. “But it’s much more complicated to do it with a vision, to bottle it years or decades later. It’s very good for the category to have all these people doing barrel hunting. But I’m curious to see in the next five to 10 years who is able to transform these personal projects into something more professional.” You can follow Jason Wilson on Wine Enthusiast and click here to subscribe to his Everyday Drinking newsletter, where you’ll receive regular dispatches on food, travel and culture through the lens of wine and spirits. This article originally appeared in the December 2023 issue of Wine Enthusiast magazine. Click here to subscribe today! Bring the World of Wine to Your Doorstep Subscribe to Wine Enthusiast Magazine now and get 1 year for $70 $29.99. Subscribe

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