Origin & Craft
Where it starts
Four years in French oak is the minimum, and select eaux-de-vie sit considerably longer before the cellar master takes them out. The blend is drawn from a reserve held at Vinet-Puranik in the Charente, in chalk cellars cut into the ground so the temperature holds without help.
The house
What is in the bottle
The dinner that runs past midnight, and one bottle still on the table. Dried fruit and honey on the nose, vanilla and toasted oak underneath, and a finish that stays about as long as the conversation does. Ninety two points. It comes out of a house that has been distilling on the same ground since 1777, which is why the cellar master can tell you which barrels are in it and when they went in.
Charente, France
Cognac is a place, not a style
A stretch of chalk and river in southwest France, and the only ground in the world permitted to give the spirit its name. The soil holds water through a dry summer and gives it back slowly.
Ugni Blanc
A grape too sharp to drink
Ugni Blanc makes a thin, high-acid wine nobody would order by the glass. That acidity is exactly what survives distillation and aging.
Harvest
Picked early, pressed whole
The fruit comes in earlier than a winemaker would choose, goes straight to press, and ferments for a week with no sugar and no sulphur added. What reaches the still is wine, and nothing else.
The alembic
Twice through copper
The wine is distilled twice in a copper pot still, as the appellation requires. On the second pass the distiller takes only the heart of the run and sets the first and last of it aside. That decision, made by hand each time, is the spirit.
Into oak
Where the spirit changes hands
Clear eau-de-vie enters French oak and stops being a distiller’s product. From here it belongs to the cellar.
Four years, minimum
Then several more
The regulation asks for four years. Our older reserves sit far longer, and it is those that give the blend its depth. Each year the cellar takes back a little through the wood.
The cellar master
One palate decides
Blending is not arithmetic. A cellar master tastes across barrels and years, then commits. The same judgement has governed this region for three centuries.
Bottling
Brought down, filled, closed
The blend is reduced to strength with distilled water over several weeks, rested again so the reduction settles, then filled and closed. Nothing is coloured and nothing is sweetened.
Boxed
Six to a case, and out
Sealed, labelled and stacked six to a case. From a hillside in the Charente to a shelf, without changing hands more than it has to.
Tasting profile
Dried fruit, honey, toasted oak
Rich layers of dried apricot and plum, vanilla and a hint of spice, over a rounded finish that stays a long while.
In market
Bombay, October 2025
The V.S.O.P on the shelf at the Puranique launch in India, at the end of a line that starts on a hillside in the Charente.
The moment it belongs to
When to open it
Puranique VSOP Cognac belongs to the evening nobody is in a hurry to end. Pour it once the plates are cleared, when the talking has slowed down and nobody has looked at the time.
Serving
Neat, in a snifter
A snifter and nothing else. Four years in oak put the layers there and a wide bowl is what lets them off the surface. Give it a minute in the glass before the first sip.
Temperature
Room temperature
Twenty to twenty two degrees. Warm it in the hand rather than over a flame. The aromatics come up on their own, and heat drives the alcohol ahead of them.
In a cocktail
In a cocktail
A Sidecar, a Sazerac, an old fashioned made with something that can take it. Four years in oak means it does not disappear under the sugar.
