Put your name down soon, because I suspect that spots will fill up quickly. I made my way to Liberty Village last week for Rémy Martin’s Hear of Cognac Experience expecting a simple cognac tasting but received, and I usually hesitate to use this word, an experience.
The night began with Rémy Martin cocktails (see below) and hors d’oeuvres, which provided a good opportunity to chat with connoisseurs and newcomers alike. I recommend ordering the spicy toddy, but the reality is you can’t choose incorrectly. Not to mention there’s nothing stopping you from picking up a bottle of VSOP on the way home and mixing your own Rémy Martin cocktails, to the surprise and delight of friends and family.
The next part of the night, easily the best, was a contest. Rather than just a traditional tasting Rémy Martin provided some empty glassware, a scorecard, some VSOP and three eau de vies, a four year, an eight year, and a twelve year. Cognac, of course, is composed of blended eau de vies, and the idea was to figure out the closest possible ratio using sight, smell and taste.
The evening closed with Rémy Martin’s Coeur de Cognac, a soft and round cognac evocative of fruit, and Rémy Martin XO, a velvety, rich affair. Of course, merely pouring from the bottle would be a bit anticlimactic, so the XO is pulled straight from a full-sized oak barrel with a pipette.
If you’re flying to France and touring the Cognac region anytime soon, by all means, skip this event. Otherwise, Rémy Martin’s Heart of Cognac Experience runs between now and November 4. But sign up soon; it would be a shame to miss this.
Rémy Martin Sidecar
1 ½ oz. Rémy Martin VSOP
½ oz. fresh lemon juice
½ oz. Cointreau
garnish with a lemon peel
Old-Fashioned
2 oz. Rémy Martin VSOP
2 dashes Angostura bitters
1 splash water
1 tsp. sugar or simple syrup
1 maraschino cherry
1 orange wedge
Spicy Toddy
1.5 oz. Rémy Martin VSOP
¾ oz. Cinnamon Schnapps
1 oz. apple juice
garnish with an apple slice
Rémy Martin VSOP comes in 50 mL, 375 mL, and 750 mL bottles for $5.85, $39.95, and $89.95 respectively.
Rémy Martin Coeur de Cognac comes in 700 mL bottles for $124.95.
Rémy Martin XO comes in 375 mL and 750 mL bottles for $100.15 and $228.00 respectively.
