Rare offering

We do not have these in stock, we can special order them for you with some weeks notice. Let me know -- paul@wineandcheeseplace.com

Rare Cognacs from Maison Surrenne

Tonneau No. 1.....$220.00 / 750ml

Inconceivably rich. In 1922, Surrenne filled an oak tonneau with old petite champagne cognacs. Concerned about evaporation because the tonneau gets direct sun from the half-moon casement over the entry door, Surrenne’s successive cellar-masters topped the tonneau every year for 79 years, always with old petite champagne of very high quality. Never used, this rare solera-like blend contains a high proportion of cognac aged more than 100 years. From the Madame facility in Jarnac. Bottled unfiltered from tonneau no. 1 on August 19, 2001. We’re bringing in 196 bottles only.
　
1946 Unblended Grande Champagne.....$480 / 750ml
Distilled in the fall of 1946 in the village of Bilhouet by artisan Hubert Portier, using grapes grown in his family’s vineyard. The first　 harvest following World War II was superb, the best in memory.　 Portier’s ancestral still—located in a rustic building behind the vineyard—was a wood-fired antique. He produced sixteen barrels of a wonderful cognac, using methods passed from father to son for generations....
Fifty-one years later, Surrenne rediscovered the 1946 while cataloguing their inventory Portier’s cognac, originally intended to become part of a blend, had remained a separate lot. Its aromas and flavors are simply superb. Surrenne has bottled the lot unblended, with no additives, just as it came from the tun, in tribute to its distiller, who quietly produced one of the finest cognacs ever made. The rich fruit is astonishingly generous for a 52-year-old bottling. Bottled in 1998, this cognac received a 96 score from Wine Enthusiast Magazine.
　
Heritage 1875....$920 / 750ml
In October of 1998, courtier Alexis Cabanne discovered Wine & Spirits Magazine’s "Cognac of the Year" in the cellar of an 18th-century farmhouse outside Jarnac, in the grande champagne region of Cognac. On the earthen floor, among age-darkened oak barrels, Médéric Rousseau had preserved a family treasure: six rattan-wrapped demijohns of a cognac whose precise date of distillation is unknown but whose existence is attested in 1875.
The Héritage was almost certainly distilled from wines vinified from pre-phylloxera grapes. Its exceptional quality is demonstrated—despite its age—by its unusual softness, delicacy, and finesse. You can taste that it has aged for more than a century. There is an extraordinary presence: a serene profundity that comes from decades of undisturbed slumber in a quiet backwater. It is a relic of a time, an entire world, that you and I can only dimly imagine. 　
　
Cask 356....$1580
Exceptional quality; genuine rarity. This is one of the finest cognacs in existence. Surrenne will release two cases—24 bottles—a year.
The barrel was shown to me when we were tasting through the Surrenne inventory of cognacs aged at least 100 years. It is simply astonishing product. The previous cellar-master, Hilaire Guilbaud, had assembled Cask 356 in 1961—his personal choice of the house’s finest old grande champagne cognacs. The cask was placed to age between the supports of Tonneau no. 23 in the home Madame cellar, where it has spent another 40 years, undisturbed. There remains cognac sufficient for some 235 bottles. Every component of the blend is well over 100 years old. Bottled unfiltered from cask no. 356 on August 10, 2001.　 24 bottles only.