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Le cognac d'André L.73
Single estate, single cask cognac
A cognac of extraordinary complexity designed for sipping
500ml – 51,4% vol.
Le cognac d'andré
IDENTITY RECORD
Growth Area
Petite champagne
Number of casks
1
ABV
51,4%
Contains
500ml
Grape variety
Ugni Blanc
Number of bottles
525
Lot
L.73
AROMATIC PROFILE
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Flavors
Structure
Citrus
Flowers
Spices
Fruit
Wood
Attack
Complexity
Sweetness
Length
The Story
This bottle, exclusively from André Bertandeau’s Petite Champagne vines in Salignac-sur-Charente comes from one of four lots of cognac that were auctioned off for charity. When we select a Spirit of Family cognac, we generally know the wine-grower/distiller or their family. In this case, however, André’s story was so poignant and his cognacs so beautiful that we were certain that we needed to add a Cognac d’André to our collection without having met him or a family member.
On June 15, 1943, André boarded a train to Paris, and then on to Germany, for his “Service de Travail Obligatoire”, a program during WWII, which required occupied France to replace each German soldier with three young Frenchmen to supply a workforce behind the Axis army. In total, over 600,000 French citizens would be deported between 1943 and 1945. André found himself among the first trainloads of young men sent away.
In the wrong place at the wrong time, he was taken prisoner in Paris, where he was transferred to Buchenwald, and then to Dora. He performed mindless labor, which others in his situation described as being simply to weaken them. There was little to eat and the work was physically difficult. On that June 15 train, 28 other prisoners were taken along with André but only nine of them returned to the Charentes three years later. One of them, Homère Fonteneau, attributed their survival to the fact that they had already been hard-working farm-boys before embarking on that long, arduous journey.
André, like Homère, had grown up on his father’s Salignac vineyards before war took him away. He found himself fortunate to return to his hometown and take over the family property, but he could never forget what had happened. For two years, he was unable to speak of the atrocities he had witnessed and survived. Along with the eight others who had lived to see their homeland again, André was able to rebuild a semblance of a life for himself back home. Those nine survivors met every year. They donated their time to schools and associations in order to educate younger generations in order to prevent that kind of violence from reoccurring. André was a lifetime donor to Médecins sans Frontières and Action against Hunger. After his death he continues to give by endowing these two organizations with all of his worldly possessions.
The eau-de-vie in this bottle had reposed in André’s Salignac cellars for over 40 years until André passed away at the age of 94 years. As with many eaux-de-vie transmitted through succession, the casks were transferred to the ORECO cellars in Cognac in 2016, where they remained until 2019. Then, with the help of Guilhem Grosperrin, from the Maison Grosperrin, we were able to purchase a part of André’s legacy. The proceeds from the sale of the casks of cognac has all gone to these two charitable associations. We continue to tell the story of André so that his labor of love continues, and so that history may not be doomed to be repeated.
In conjunction with Maison Grosperrin of Saintes and Maison Godet of La Rochelle, we have made a donation to La Part des Anges of some of this eau-de-vie in order to further André’s cause.
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IN THE TRÉSORS DE FAMILLE RANGE
