The French Kiss

About 800 feet above French soil, I feel the panic start to set in. I'm in the rear seat of a red-and-white Robin DR400 single-prop airplane, the meekest vehicle I've ever encountered. The little wings flap in the breeze. The engine buzzes like a gnat. I need a drink, and in that regard only, I'm in the right place.

On my left sits Jason Bowden, the sharp-witted English brand ambassador for Rémy Martin cognac, whose lanky frame and pale shade make him look like a handsome Q-tip. At the helm is Andrées, otherwise known as Rémy's marketing assistant. Her pilot uniform: tight jeans and a tighter sweater. She's working the foot pedals in black stilettos. We're shoehorned into the tiny plane's red leather cabin—me, the Q-tip, the hot assistant-pilot and the stilettos. Below us the vineyards of Cognac spread out clear to the sea. It's harvest season, and much is afoot. Bowden starts pouring snifters of Rémy Extra, but Andrées declines.

"We usually fly drunk but not today," she jokes, shouting over the engine's wheeze. "We have a guest!"

That would be me, and make mine a double.

The reason for this flirtation with mortality? The liquor made in this region of southwest France is the fastest-growing booze popularity-wise in the States right now. For hip-hop stars and four-star chefs, for any guy climbing into a bathtub with the woman of his dreams, cognac is the ultimate extravagance—the "brandy of the gods," as Victor Hugo put it. Yet few drinkers have any idea what it is, what separates an XO from a VSOP and why a single bottle can cost thousands of dollars. So, like a certain French inspector on the trail of the Pink Panther, I went hunting for clues.

A few facts: Cognac is brandy. You boil wine and collect the vapors, concentrating the alcohol. (The scientific word would be distillation.) You age it in oak barrels, and there you have it. That's the basic scoop, anyway. The Dutch were the first real brandy fans, back in the 1600s (they called it brandewijn, literally "burnt wine"). The English and Americans followed. Brandy is now made on every continent, but only the brandy made here can be called cognac.

"Look down," Bowden says, pointing through the airplane window at a section of Cognac called Grande Champagne. (This is not to be confused with the wine region, which is northeast of Paris.) From above, the earth is carved into vineyards fat with a white grape called ugni blanc. "This is where the best brandy in the world comes from," Bowden says. When he talks about cognac, he talks about the chalky soil, the perfect climate, the forests to the east where the oak trees are harvested to make the barrels that age the liquor. All the elements are perfectly suited for their job. Everything is here, and you can see it all from a marinated bird's-eye view.

That night we dine on pigeon stuffed with duck's liver and Bordeaux. You know, light fare. The French drink more per capita than anybody else, and it's readily apparent.

In the morning, ripe with the kind of hangover that makes your hair throb, I pay a visit to the Founder's Cellar at Hennessy. If paradise exists on earth, this is it—the most valuable collection of alcohol on the planet. The lack of security is dumbfounding. You walk down a residential street called Rue de Crouin and find the back entrance, locked behind a wooden door. There are no signs, no guards, no tourists. In the States a cellar like this would be smothered in barbed wire and insurance disclaimers. Inside, the damp air is thick with the "angel's share," the portion of liquor that evaporates from the barrels. The walls are lined with shelves holding hundreds of glass jugs of priceless brandies that have been aging since as far back as 1830. Rows of barrels lie on their side, each with a year on it.

My guide is Maurice Hennessy, a 54-year-old descendant of Richard Hennessy, who in 1765 founded what is now the world's largest brandy firm. Maurice is an amiable cartoon of a man, with eyebrows so bushy they look like squirrels. He's a man of French taste and British manners, born with a tie on. The fact that his surname has become a symbol of gangsta status is one of the great absurdities of our time. ("Smoked out, Hennessy and plenty weed wit mo bitches, four bitches, some cole bitches, c'mon bitches"—Snoop Dogg.)

"This one is my favorite," Hennessy notes, tapping a barrel that reads "1900." He pulls the cork out of the barrel's belly, dips in a test tube attached to a leather string and pours us a couple. We swirl, nose and taste. The liquor is as rich as the man who poured it, and it does wonders for throbbing hair. "If cognac is a symphony," Hennessy says, "this 1900 is one instrument. The master blender writes the symphony, marrying different brandies to achieve the perfect mix."

He leads me to a row of barrels with "Richard Hennessy" written on them, appropriately in chalk. This is the firm's top-shelf brandy, the "symphony." A bottle will run you $1,800, and a single barrel contains about $1 million worth of liquor.

Hennessy uncorks one and ladles some out. The cognac is a blend of more than 100 brandies, some of which came out of the still during Theodore Roosevelt's first term. Back then there were no cars around here, just horses and trains. Even in the dark cellar, the liquid is luminescent. When you nose it, you pick up apricot, lily flower, cigar box. And when you taste, everything you've been told about what you're drinking starts to make sense. Generations of artisans worked on this single sip of booze—grape farmers, lumberjacks, coopers, blenders, marketing assistants in tight pants and stilettos. And it's paying off.

So what makes this stuff so extravagant? A good bottle of cognac captures time in a bottle. Whoever said that time is one of those things money can't buy was wrong. It's just expensive.

Inside Scoop

The label on a bottle of cognac will tell you exactly what you're getting into, if you know how to read it

VS: Very Special (sometimes called Three Star). By law this cognac is a blend of brandies that must be at least two years old. It's the cheap stuff—great for flambeing the dessert course. If you see it on a menu for $10 a glass or more, leave the establishment immediately.

VSOP: Very Superior Old Pale (sometimes called Reserve or VO, as in Very Old). This juice is a blend of brandies that are at least four years old. Generally speaking, it's your everyday drinking cognac, perfect for cocktails or sipping straight.

XO: Extra Old. A blend of brandies that are at least six years old, an XO is going to cost you about $80 and up. This liquor is for dinner parties and romantic occasions (or nightly drinking, if you've got the loot to cover the bill). Don't mix it.

Extra: Sometimes used to define a cognac that is a level above XO, such as Rémy Martin Extra.

Grande Champagne: The 32,096-acre section of the Cognac region designated by the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac (i.e., the brandy police) as the finest production area for grape growing. If the label says Grande Champagne, you are psyched. You can wear this liquor as cologne.

Petite Champagne: A slightly larger section neighboring Grande Champagne that's designated as the second-best region. And by second best, we mean just shy of perfect.

Fine Champagne: A cognac made only with grapes harvested from the Grande and Petite Champagne regions.

Champagne Pendarvis: An adult-film starlet who has nothing to do with cognac. She is featured in such blockbusters as Welcome to Bootyville and Maverdick.

Pineau: A cognac blended with grape juice or wine for a lighter, fruitier sipping drink (16 to 22 percent alcohol). White and rosé pineaus are available. They're best served chilled on a hot day.