Monday 15 February 2010

A Whole New World of Cognac

I met with an uncle who's a connoisseur and had the honour to taste some of the finest Cognac in his collection.  

I better jot down what I learnt like a reporter, before everything evaporates!  






  • One can never be in too much of a hurry to enjoy the wonderful Cognac you just been poured.  The best rule of thumb is to let the Cognac breathe at least a half-minute per year old.  Thus for the XO I had, which was 20-years of age, breathed for a minimum of 10 mins prior to our tasting.   

  • A tulip glass must be used to get the full aroma do somersaulting in the glass.  
  • Great Cognac is sipped and not swallowed!  So what he meant was, taste a few "drops" at a time, let it sit in the mouth for a good minute for flavours to engulf the whole of our palate and entice our oral cavity in totality.  

  • Hold up the tulip glass and take one or two shallow sniffs, don't enforce it with a big breath or else the 80% or so spirit will just anesthetize our entire olfactory and dumb our senses.

  • Then try to make sense of what you got out from that momentarily wait. Was it fruity or flowery?  Woody or spicy?  Chalky or oaky?  
I had no clue as you can guess, but the roof of my mouth and the back of my nasal sure had some fun crawling in a whole new world of wine tasting! 


  

1 comment:

BY said...

I presume this is a bit like drinking whisky? I went for whisky-tasting once... ya, you hear me right...whisky-tasting... From Macallan. We tasted a series of 6-8 bottles, I was the only lady on the table of 10, and I didn't have my dinner 'cos I was held back at work... imagine my struggle to try to sample all while staying composed, haha... tell you more when we meet.