Whenever I hear the phrase "too big to fail", I always think of brandy, for some reason.
Not that brandy is "failing" as such, but at a time when dark spirits are booming, it's not exactly setting the world on fire either. While whiskey and rum are enjoying unprecedented boom times and the cocktail culture revives interest in spirits generally, brandy seems to be treading water.
Of course, when we talk about brandy, we need to be a little more specific. There are two types of brandy that tend to remain above it all – Cognac and Armagnac.
Both these top-end French brandies tend to have much broader appeal than spirits labeled simply "brandy" and you can see by the levels of interest in them on Wine-Searcher – and the prices they command – that they exist in a different class. Rarity and age make these spirits attractive to both collectors and especially so for Cognac, which has developed its own unique audience.
Cognac gained unlikely prominence when various rappers began sporting bottles of it in music videos and live appearances, thus bringing together two worlds that had hitherto been poles apart. And the reason for the rappers' interest in Cognac (and Champagne, for that matter) was all to do with conspicuous consumption – Cognac cost quite a bit of money, and the more expensive the Cognac on show, the more powerful the rapper, or so the theory goes.
Not that Cognac necessarily needed the endorsement of a group of boastful performers – it was quite capable of commanding high prices before rap was invented, but it did at least open Cognac up to a new, younger, more aspirational market.
And there has always been blindingly expensive Cognac on the market, too, and it has only become more expensive over the years, following single-malt Scotch's predilection for expensive decanters to add another few thousand to the asking price.
This year's list of the Cognacs with the highest average retail prices listed on Wine-Searcher is pretty familiar.
The Most Expensive Cognacs on Wine-Searcher:Actually, familiar is a pretty weak word for it. Eight of this year's list were present last year, with only the Louis XIII Diamant and the Hardy l'Automne breaking into the top 10, at the expense of the Sazerac de Forge & Fils and the Cave de l'Hotel de Paris Grand Champagne, which both fell off the list due to falling average prices.
Price has been the main theme behind this year's list. While the aggregate cost for the 10 most expensive bottles has risen slightly (up by 3.82 percent on last year), individual performances have been a little more erratic. The Louis XIII Rare Cask saw a 13.1 percent rise since last year while, at the other end of the scale, the Jules Robin fell by 30 percent over the same period. In fact, the average price of the Jules Robin has almost halved in the past two years – in July 2018 it was $25,421.
Maintaining high prices isn't really a priority for Cognac houses, of course, except as a mark of prestige. The vast majority of Cognac sold carries a price tag well below the $100 mark and even then the top sellers are often available for less than an average of $50.
However, it's search numbers for Cognac that should have producers worried. All categories of brandy are facing a drop in interest as consumers are lured away by more dynamic whiskey and rum categories, and Cognac is no different; search numbers have been stalling for more than five years.
If Cognac isn't careful, it won't matter how many rappers are swinging a bottle of the region's finest in their music videos. Unless consumers can be attracted back to the pleasures of Cognac, high prices like these might turn into memorial markers rather than symbols of success.
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July 28, 2020 at 07:01AM
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The World's Most Expensive Cognacs - Wine-Searcher
"expensive" - Google News
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