Hennessy

Hennessy was founded in 1765 by Richard Hennessy, an Irishman who had served the French crown before settling on the quays of Cognac. He was not a distiller but a judge of other people's spirit: the house was built on selecting eaux-de-vie and shipping them out along the Charente. Barrels reached America by 1794 and China by 1859, and the maison was selling on five continents before the century was out.

Selection is still the craft. Hennessy buys much of its eaux-de-vie from growers and distillers across the region, drawing on four of the Cognac crus — Grande Champagne, Petite Champagne, Borderies and Fins Bois — and everything turns on its tasting committee, which meets on weekday mornings and works through fifty or more samples a day, deciding what enters the cellars.

What is bought is aged in French oak, and the house holds a reserve of more than three hundred thousand barrels. That library is what allows very old blends to exist at all.

The judgement behind it has stayed in one family since the early nineteenth century. Jean Fillioux, a cooper, was the first of his family to take charge of the blending; Renaud Fillioux de Gironde, who holds the role now, is the eighth generation to do it.