Le Cognac de Jean is a blend of 1969 and 1977 eau-de-vie from Jean Biais, who was a fellow vintner, distiller, and our neighbor.
Just after the Second World War Jean, who was originally from Cognac, married Mauricette Clavaud and began working with his father-in-law on the family’s Eraville property. Jean and Mauricette had about a dozen hectares of vines in Grande Champagne (Eraville) and Petite Champagne (Chateauneuf) as well as livestock in the beginning, but no distillery. Jean decided to install an eight hectoliter, wood and charcoal-burning pot still in 1960 and another 14 hectoliter one a couple of years later, after falling in love with the intricacies of the distillation process.
Jean was also passionate about the life of his village; he served on the mayor’s council for a number of years and founded the town social and hunting clubs. Beyond his involvement in his community, he was elected as the first president of the regional wine-growers’ union. He played an pivotal role, alongside Jean Brillet and Paul Hostaing, in negotiating the first contracts between vintners and the big cognac houses they supply. Since then, these agreements have become the norm.