the traveler's resource guide to festivals & films
a FestivalTravelNetwork.com site
part of Insider Media llc.
Travel Info
Cooking Channel Chef G. Garvin's Great Grilling & Travel Guide
- Details
- Parent Category: Travel Info
- Category: Places To Eat
- Published on Friday, 15 June 2012 19:26
- Written by Brad Balfour
Summer is upon us and so is the smell of grilling wafting in the air. To assist us in our quest for finessing fine grilling exercises, the Cooking Channel has called on one of its vets, G. Garvin -- who has enjoyed popular success as chef, author, entrepreneur, and television host -- to entreat with some of the best cooking to be found nationally. Starting May 29th, the Atlanta native debuts his new show, Road Trip with G. Garvin.
Though he built his culinary repertoire during childhood, his earliest experience came with cutting and peeling vegetables alongside his mother in the kitchen of Atlanta’s Jewish Home for the Aging. So besides the obvious local inspirations he has a taste of another kind of orthodoxy to influence him.
Raised by a single mom, surrounded by four sisters, the 13-year-old Garvin traded after-school football practice for a job at Atlanta's Old Vinings Inn, soaping dishes and soaking up the inner workings of a high-end kitchen. Two years later, he became the youngest cook at the downtown Ritz-Carlton, where he held seasonal positions.
Garvin moved west, initially in 1988, to open the Ritz-Carlton’s Rancho Mirage resort in Palm Springs. At 20, he moved to Europe to further his culinary training and served as Jean Pierre Maharebacha’s apprentice. Then he got kitchen positions in Hamburg and Warsaw, while documenting everything he learned. After nearly two years, he returned to Atlanta to become sous chef of the award-winning Italian restaurant, Veni, Vidi, Vici. However, the lure of the West Coast drew him back, this time, to Los Angeles.
During the ‘90s, he served as Morton’s executive chef, where he orchestrated dinner for the second Annual Vanity Fair Oscar fete, as well as a lavish banquet for the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
With doing “really good food” as the goal, Garvin ended up at the former Hollywood watering hole Kass Bah, where he shaped a creative menu appealing to both gourmands and show-biz execs alike. A year later, he became executive chef at the restaurant Reign, which became a smash and earned Garvin great reviews and his highest salary.
Yearning for both business and creative success with food, he left there to independently cater high-profile events, including two exclusive dinners for President Clinton, a private brunch for Senator Hillary Clinton and meals for other notable clients.
After two years, he teamed with a catering client to open a restaurant. In fall of 2001, G. Garvin’s opened to critical acclaim, then expanding two years later to more than double its size.
Plans for a series of cooking DVDs brought him to the attention of TV One in early 2004, where his enthusiasm seemed perfect for a new network looking to provide lifestyle programming for the growing foodie audience. It was then that Turn Up the Heat with G. Garvin came to fruition and now this summer, his latest show, Road Trip with G. Garvin.
Q: Cooking is something you’ve always done. Did you start out doing Jewish food since your mom worked at The Jewish Home?
GG: My mother did. I was in the kitchen, doing what I could, considering most of it was culture. Just hanging out with my mom and watching what she did. Then she’d go home and make her own version of meatballs. A little bit, but not too much.
Q: Why is there such a fascination with food now?
GG: People are learning to understand food in a way that it’s not just something you do. You don’t just eat to live. The science of food, the development of recipes, the new science, it’s become not just something to do, it’s become a lifestyle.
People are savvy, where people don’t have desires to be chefs; they have desires to learn how to cook, and make great meals, and understand why you’d do a pinot noir with chicken and steak and pinot grigio with seafood and pasta. There’s a lot of intelligent information about food where before there may not have been.
Q: When you grill, do you grill everything? What can’t you grill? Guess you can’t grill watermelon.
GG: Nowadays you probably could. Grilling is a method, just like sautéing or baking, or broiling. You can braise your leg of lamb or grill your leg of lamb. For my show and the show we’re doing, not everything is grilled.
But this time of year, there are certain focuses for people. But if you want to grill it, figure out a way to do so. I love throwing fish on the grill. I work out five days a week, so I throw it on the grill, it’s all smoky from the wood, and have it with a salad. If you have a desire to grill, you certainly can, but you just have to create a method.
Q: I guess it depends on what sauces you use.
GG: The bigger issue, and what people tend to forget is, when people grill, they tend to create a big flame and turn it and turn it and get the grill marks, the key components when I grill are hot, medium, and warm.
Start with whatever your cooking with a hot flame, if you’re using a sauce, put it on at medium so it coats well because of the warmth. The problem people have is grilling and burning. If you start it super-hot, you get grill marks and flavor, slide it to the medium side to actually let it cook, then finish it on the warm side, it allows you to sauce it while grilling and getting that flavor without burning.
Q: Are there meats or foods you haven’t used that you want to explore like, say, ostrich?
GG: I have never used ostrich. Alligator I love, I have cooked rattlesnake and bison in the past. So I would think that the next thing for me, I’ve been thinking about a good dish with some alligator.
Q: Have you tried grilling insects?
GG: I have not.
Q: Supposedly people do a lot with grasshoppers.
GG: I’ve heard that and seen different people do that all over the world. It’s going to be less about me, and more the demographic that I’m cooking for. It would be a hard sell. I think people are more open minded about where things are going with food, but I think it’s key to talk slowly.
Q: You could throw it in as a side dish.
GG: We got people comfortable with escargot. There are certain cheeses that they have with worms that people are eating in France, I think it’d be a hard sell in America. But people are open to getting themselves prepared for something. You certainly have to ease your way in.
Q: Frogs, too.
GG: Frogs legs are great, I love them.
Q: I never tried them grilled.
GG: The grill is a great component. It gets you out of the kitchen and into the backyard or park. Grilling can really be fun.
Q: How large do you like your grilling environment to be?
GG: I’m a big guy, so I like a big-boy pit. I like to throw a whole tenderloin, whether it’s pork or beef, side of ribs, whole side of salmon, we actually did that in Houston. Grilled a whole side of salmon, with brisket and some shrimp. I like big, smoky, loud, big-boy grills.
Q: How about tuna -- do you put the whole thing on the grill?
GG: You can, but tuna is one of those delicacies. When I think tuna, I think cerviche, carpcio, tartare. Navy black, I used to do a blackened pepper and mint with shitake tuna, but I don’t know if I’d ever throw the tuna onto the grill.
Q: Do you ever worry about carcinogens that supposedly occur in some foods during grilling?
GG: I’m just not qualified to answer that question, unfortunately, so I couldn’t answer that question intelligently. Grilling has been around as long as I can remember. It has changed, absolutely. It’s not harmful but I’m not a doctor. If there is a concern, people should grill in moderation, but I cannot speak intelligently on that philosophy.
Q: Guess it depends on what you grill with.
GG: There is some concern. Oak wood, open flame, it can’t be too harmful. It’s the way of the caveman. Throw it on the grill with a natural flame and oak wood.
Q: So your preference is oak wood?
GG: Yeah, absolutely.
Q: You have your On the Road series and then you have your grilling. Are those separate environments or do they interweave?
GG: They sort of work together. The name of the show is Road Trip with G. Garvin and there are some episodes where we do grill, but primarily, it’s about road trips, finding unique restaurants, finding great things about those places and working with those people and those places.
Q: Where do you like to travel when on the road -- where do you like to go?
GG: What we love is that we love to see something in a community that all the locals are talking about. A mom and pop spot that’s not visible to the regular traveler. Whether it’s a burger, or a sandwich, or pasta, or pie, we can’t adhere to the culinary streets, if you will.
Q: What places do you want to visit?
GG: We’ve gone to Austin, Houston, Nashville, Atlanta and New York. I’m looking forward to going to Virginia, Chicago and Philadelphia. I’m really looking forward to Vietnam, Peru and Brazil. I’m hoping we can go to a lot of great places where we can find some great dishes.
Q: How small do you get or big do you get?
GG: We get Nashville small and we get Austin big, so it’s a little of both. We get Lfayette small. But there’s big flavors and big things going on in places like Austin. We hit Charleston, which was a great place, but small. We got both.
Q: When did you decide to move back to Atlanta after living in Los Angeles?
GG: It’s because I grew up in Atlanta. I started my food career there. When we decided to do this show, the network wanted to do the first episode in Georgia, so that was one reason. I’m opening a restaurant in the Atlanta airport, that’s reason number two. I opened a studio in Atlanta where we shoot videos and host parties. It just made good food business sense to go to Atlanta, so I did.
Q: You already have the media profile, so you’re not losing something by not being there.
GG: That’s a great point. Outside of the weather, thank god that I’m busy enough that I don’t need to live in Los Angeles to work. I’ve earned the right to live outside of Los Angeles. I love LA, most of my adult life has been there, it’s a great food town, but I also love where Atlanta is going as a new food mecca. There’s all sorts of genres of food. The scene is growing and I love being there.
Q: You didn’t want to live in NY?
GG: It just never came up. I almost did, but right from Atlanta I got a job in California. I’ve always been responsible, never really packed my bags and took a chance. I went to California, loved working there, and that’s where I ended up. New York has always been on the radar, but I’ve been lucky enough that I’ve gone to places where people have interests in southern food.
Q: Will the fascination with haute cuisine encourage us to diet better or will we gorge ourselves?
GG: People are smart enough now to…one thing I argue is that people are more food intelligent than they’re given credit for. Listen, people like to splurge some times, but everyone has their own personal health requirements.
People are smart enough to know what works with them. That’s the one thing I’ve always argued when I have a show or a restaurant, I say people are more food intelligent than we give them credit for. I don’t think anyone is gonna over-do it. A small few will, as always, but the overall feels is that are going to indulge less and learn to be responsible.
Where to Eat in Israel: Top Restaurant Picks
- Details
- Parent Category: Travel Info
- Category: Places To Eat
- Published on Sunday, 29 April 2012 02:58
- Written by Janna Gur
Israel is a tourist's Eden, but restaurants have not traditionally rated among its "bucket list" attractions. Now a foodie can make a special trip just to explore the local culinary landscape.
Here are a few of my top favorite Israeli restaurants, and I'm happy to say that the country has many more truly excellent choices these days.
Many tourists tend to regard Tel Aviv as a transit place, en route to somewhere more scenic or holy. But in terms of variety, quality and originality, Tel Aviv's restaurant scene is on par with that of European capitals and it may be a small version of New York.
I would start with The Dining Hall (23 Shaul Hamelech Boulevard, (0)5-79443036). It's inspired by a kibbutz dining hall, only the food is very unkibbutz. It's nouvelle Israeli cuisine with a lot of Jewish ethinic and Middle Eastern influences -- and with a chef's touch. It's huge and bustling with long communal tables. The restaurant is right across from the Performing Arts Center and the new wing of the Tel Aviv Museum. So it's great for a pre- or post-theater dinner or lunch. Plus it's affordable.
In Israel you can go out for great food very late, so if you´ve been to the opera and you're done at around 10:30 pm, you can cross the square and the kitchen will be open. You can have a proper starter, main course and dessert or a lot of small plates and share them. The chef is Omer Miller, and he's 30 years old. He´s very famous now in Israel now; he has his own show.
Another restaurant I really love has a funny name, Abraxis North (40 Lilenblum Street 0-5-46786560). Here I'll start with the chef because he's the real story: Eyal Shani. He was one of the forefathers of the Israeli culinary revolution. He started his first restaurant, Oceanus, in 1989 in Jerusalem and then moved to Tel Aviv.
Eyal is a very controversial figure, but he´s a genius. His menus read like modern poetry. His description of a dish might be something like, "Tomato salad made from tomatoes both for and from old women at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem."
He is truly creative and, for me, one of two or three of the best chefs in Israel. Eyal studied cinema. Like many Israeli chefs he didn´t formally study cuisine; he's self-taught.
You have to experience his food to really understand his philosophy. Eyal Shani's style of cooking is taking simple, fresh ingredients and making them sing. One of his dishes is called "Baby Cabbage." You receive a whole purple cabbage on a plate. You don´t even know how to start attacking it. You take bites and it melts in your mouth.
He first braises it for hours and then sautes it with butter and I don't know what else, and it's absolutely amazing. He also does magical things with cauliflower and tomatoes, and he makes the best focaccia, which comes hot off the wood-burning stone oven, or tabun. His chocolate dessert served in a paper cone is unbelievable.
Another place Eyal Shani owns is called Miznon, which means "buffet" (21 Ibn Gvirol, (0)3-716 8977). It´s more of a kiosk, not a full-fledged restaurant, so it´s perfect for lunch. Everything is served in a pita. But what he puts in the pita is a different matter! He makes the best cauliflower in the world. He first cooks it and then bakes and roasts it, and serves it with sour cream. He also does a wonderful take on chicken livers with green onions. For dessert he cuts off the top of the pita and fills it with chocolate spread. It's such a funky place and really upbeat.
A quick word about dress codes in Israel: no matter how upscale the restaurant, you can wear what you want. Israel is still very casual. I always say you can only be overdressed.
Orna and Ella is a Tel Aviv classic (33 Shenkin Street, 03-6204753). It´s been around for almost 20 years and it´s still going strong. Neither Orna nor Ella studied cooking; they were university students when they started baking cakes to support themselves, and that progressed into a buffet and then a restaurant.
It's very women friendly -- we call it "girls food" -- with lots of vegetables. The bistro's signature dish is Sweet Potato Fritters, served with sour cream and chives. Another is simply Rice with Vegetables. It's very feminine cooking, devoid of ego and simple, but wonderful.
There's a lovely new farmers market at Tel Aviv's port. On the weekend it's an open market, and during the week it has an indoors market. Downstairs is a really good Spanish tapas restaurant called Tapas B'Shuk, or Tapas in the Market 03-7162757). The food is very tasty and the open kitchen adds to the ambiance.
In Jaffa the Haj Kahil family has opened up a new restaurant next to the clock tower in the square (18 Raziel Street, 05-79428347). This Haj Kahil establishment serves unique salads and authentic Galilean specialties, including stuffed leg or lamb, which is a symphony of Levantine flavors. The food is delicious and different. It´s not what Israelis perceive as Arab food, like humus and skewered meats -- it's much more and the first upscale Palestinian restaurant in Tel Aviv.
In Jerusalem there are more good kosher places than in Tel Aviv. I really like Angelica (7 Shatz Street, 05-79442884), which is an elegant kosher restaurant with lots of seasonal grilled dishes. The owners recently opened another kosher place, called Grand Café (70 Derech Bethlehem, 02-5702702) in Bakaa, a beautiful neighborhood in the German Colony. In addition to its impressive Israeli breakfast and delicious fare throughout the day, it's a magnet for foodies with a sweet tooth thanks to the fabulous cheese cakes, almond tarts and fruit pies.
There's a lovely kosher restaurant by the Machane Yehuda market called Topolino (62 Agrippas Street, 02-622 3466). It's vegetarian Italian, reasonably priced and it's really wonderful. In the market there's also a lot of what we call "Jewish soul food," which is mainly Kurdish or Iraqi or Morrocan with all kinds of soups and stuffed vegetables, and they're all kosher of course. These are very simple places -- any one of them would be a good bet. You´ll spot them by the long lines.
The reason there are so few good kosher restaurants in Israel is that you have to close down for shabbat and holidays, and this is where you make your money. So restauranteurs shy away from that. And many of them don't want a mashgiach (supervisor) meddling in their kitchen. It's a pity, since about 30 percent of the Israel population keeps kosher. So many people are completely cut off from this incredible food revolution we're having. Luckily, though, one of the things Israeli chefs do best is vegetables, so those who don't mix meat and milk can find many vegetarian options.
Around the Sea of Galilee, there's Kze Hanachal (Paz Gas station, Kibbutz Genossar entrance, 04-6717776), which looks deceptively like a tourist trap because it's huge and lots of tourist busses stop by. The food is inspired by Lebanese and Jordanian cuisine, and it's really interesting and different. It's jointly owned by an Arab and an Israeli.
The best restaurant in northern Israel is Muscat, in the Mitzpe Hayaim Hotel Spa, 04-699 4555), between Rosh Pina and Safed. Here you can taste excellent Galilean cooking in a luxurious setting, and they source all their produce from a huge organic farm that surrounds the hotel.
[Janna Gur is the bestselling author of The Book of Israeli Food and editor-in-chief of Israel’s celebrated food and wine magazine, Al Hashulchan (On the Table)]
TEL AVIV/JAFFA
The Dining Hall
23 Shaul Hamelech Boulevard
05-79443036
Abraxis North
40 Lilenblum Street
Tel Aviv
05-46786560
Miznon
21 Ibn Gvirol
03-716 8977
Orna and Ella
33 Shenkin Street
03-6204753
Tapas B'Shuk
Tel Aviv Port Market
03-7162757
Haj Kahil
18 Raziel Street
05-79428347
JERUSALEM
Angelica
7 Shatz Street
05-79442884
Grand Café
70 Derech Bethlehem
02-5702702
Topolino
62 Agrippas Street
02-622 3466
GALILEE
Kze Hanachal
Paz Gas station, Kibbutz Genossar entrance
04-6717776
Muscat
Mitzpe Hayaim Hotel Spa
04-699 4555
NYC Places To Eat: Hip & Happening at Ha'Chi
- Details
- Parent Category: Travel Info
- Category: Places To Eat
- Published on Saturday, 13 August 2011 02:50
- Written by Elaine Ing
The Lower East Side (LES) of New York City used to be synonymous with grunge and 
litter-strewn with drug paraphernalia. With the erection of the fashionable Thompson LES Hotel and in-house restaurant Shang, it sets the standard for LES 2.0.
Visting the Thompson LES would be like visiting the Museum of Modern Art. This impressive 18-story all-in-one hotel-restaurant-social hotspot is a who's who of contemporary art, fashion and design. Opened in 2008, the hotel is the brainchild of architect EdRawlings and interior designer JimWalrod.
Cognac: Only The Nose Knows
- Details
- Parent Category: Travel Info
- Category: Places To Eat
- Published on Tuesday, 17 May 2011 08:27
- Written by Barney Lehrer & Jesse Nash
Cognac smells.
Yes, it's true. But it's not exactly a bad thing. In fact, when it comes to cognac, "smelling" is crucial. And it is the key to the magic of the beverage.
Revered the world over as an elegant and expensive end to a gastronomic meal. Sipped from expensive crystal. Drunk while smoking $200 Havanas. The Queen’s favorite tipple.
How many people know that this drink originates in dank, moldy cellars with black fungus on the ceilings, draped with spider webs and thick with the smells of centuries of evaporated alcohol mixed with stone, chalk and gravel?
Welcome to the world of cognac!
How does this happen? How does the world’s most elegant (and in, some cases, the most expensive) drink originate in such humble or, some might say, squalid circumstances?
It all has to do with noses. The noses of winemakers, distillers and, most importantly, "maîtres de chai" (cellar masters).
The winemaker grows the grapes and makes the wine; the distiller (usually the same person as the winemaker) takes the new wine and distills it into "eau de vie" (pure spirit or "water of life"); and the maître de chai decides which eau de vie -- very often made by many different distillers -- is, first, used for aging, and second, blended into the final product.
And each of these individuals relies on his/her nose to make the right decisions.
‛Devilish' Way To Make It
How and why is this?
First, the wine: Most of the wine used to make cognac is made from the ugni blanc 
(tebbiano) grape. It is a highly acidic, low alcohol (9%) white wine. The wine made from the grape produces an eau-de-vie that can be both fruity and floral, depending on the exact area (or "terroir," as the French call it) where the grapes are grown.
The area considered to produce the highest quality wine for cognac is called "Grande Champagne" -- the word "champagne" having its roots in the old French word for chalk, because of the high chalk content of the soil. Wines made in Grande Champagne tend to produce light cognacs with a predominantly floral bouquet. Wines made from the other areas tend to turn into cognac that has more fruit in its aromas.
A good wine from a good winemaker in a good year is essential for a truly great cognac. But creating the wine is just the beginning of a very long process.
The next step is distillation.
Cognac was invented in the 16th century, when Dutch and British traders were importing salt and wine from the Charente River region, in which Cognac is the largest town. Demand for the wine was so great that winemakers increased production to the point where the quality deteriorated, and by the time it reached its markets after weeks at sea, the wine was spoiled.
To solve this problem they distilled or "burned" it into what they called "brandwijn" -- burnt wine -- hence the name "Brandy." The seamen found it to be an excellent substitute for the rancid water aboard ship. And what was left at the destination ports in northern Europe and England was diluted with water in an attempt to recreate the original wine.
The winemakers in the Cognac area decided that this kind of wine needed some further refinement. So they came up with a new distillation process called double distillation.
According to legend, double distillation was invented by the Chevalier Jacques de la Croix de Segonzac Maron, a very pious man born around 1558, who was an army captain during various religious civil wars in the Charente area. After retiring from military service, he became a winemaker.
One night he had a dream that Satan was trying to take his soul. In the dream, Satan threw him into a "cauldron of evil" but his faith was so strong that his soul survived a first "cooking." So Satan had to do a second "firing" -- and at that point the Chevalier woke up.
Always brooding about ways to improve his wines, the Chevalier thought his dream was a message from God that he should apply this system to Charente wine. The process, now known as Charentais distilling -- and by law the only method of producing cognac -- yields a fragrant but complex eau-de-vie that the distiller, following his nose and know-how, creates by separating the "heads" (first condensate), "tails" (last condensate) and the "heart," a highly alcoholic (68 to 72%) clear eau-de-vie that will become cognac.
A History of Smelling
The "master smeller" and person most responsible for creating great cognac is the maître de chai. He is the per
son who selects the new eau-de-vie from both the house’s own production (if they produce any) and the production of some of the thousands of distillers in the region.
He is the person who keeps track of the cognac that is aging in the barrels in the cellar, many of which have been there for 70+ years. He is the main person who chooses which cognacs, from which vintages, should be blended each year in order to produce products that keep the house’s style and high quality consistent over the decades.
Jean-Philippe Bergier, the maître de chai at cognac house Bache-Gabrielsen, is what we might call a “nose professor.” Born into a family of generations of maîtres de chai, he is at once a master smeller, a master organizer and a master professor. And perhaps even more: like many maîtres de chai, he considers himself to be like an orchestra conductor, who has to blend the smells of different "instruments" into a harmonious product.
Jean-Philippe looks like a history professor. He can spend hours lecturing about the particular smells of an eau-de-vie that he just got from a distiller. More importantly, he can patiently and painstakingly explain the process of selecting and then blending the aged cognacs which will make up one of the many blends made by the house.
Delamain is one of the oldest cognac houses, and one of the few that are still owned and run by its founding family. According to Kyle Jarrard, a Senior Editor of the International Herald Tribune and author of Cognac, The Seductive Saga of the World’s Most Coveted Spirit, the Delamain cognac is "the World’s Best Cognac." And indeed you are certain to find their products on the menus of most of the top restaurants in the world.
The key to the quality at Delemain is that little has changed in production since the c
ompany was founded in 1824 by Irish immigrant James Delamain. The eau-de-vie only comes from the Grande Champagne area. And the cognac itself is aged for at least 25 years in old oak barrels in the firm’s ancient cellars next to the Charente River in the town of Jarnac.
Charles Brastaad-Delamain, the current Managing Director of the company, explains that smelling is the key to enjoyment of the drink. Indeed, he says, "Nosing is 80% of the pleasure of cognac." And a tour of the modest Delamain cellars in the town of Jarnac is in itself a "voyage for the nose."
Charles points out that the minute one walks into one of its cellars, each one of them has a different smell. And the cellars‛ smells, together with the smells of the eau de vie, the old oak, the mold and the humid river air create the unique personalities of the Delamain cognacs. Charles sees the art of blending and aging cognac to be similar to the skills of a perfume maker. The object is to create a mix of smells that will entice and seduce.
Chateau Montifaud is a rural family-run operation, just as it was when it was founded in the mid 19th century. The Vallet family has been making cognac at their Chateau de Montifaud since 1866. Six generations of the family have passed, from father to son, traditions of winemaking, distilling, aging and blending aged eau-de-vie. And, unlike most of their competitors, they still own and control all steps of the process.
The Vallets believe strongly in their family tradition. "When a son joins his father, it is a precious moment that must be reflected in the cognac," says Michel Vallet, the current patriarch, who is now slowly transferring his experience, wisdom and, most importantly, olfactory skills to his 35-year-old son Laurent.
Laurent has worked at Montifaud since 2000. In that year, he put aside a reserve of his vintage as part of the family’s tradition of keeping some of the cognac distilled by each generation. This is so that only future generations will be able to sell it, as well as to understand the tastes and aromas of the family’s products.
Michel and Laurent are the skillful winemakers, distillers and blenders at Montifaud today. They own 90 hectares in the two top-tier regions, "Petite Champagne" and "Grande Champagne."
The blending process, however, must involve the whole family. So, when the time is right, Michel and Laurent invite Michel’s retired father, Louis, and Michel’s wife, Catherine Vallet, to join the process.
Catherine explains: "The Grande Champagne and Petite Champagne regions each have distinct characteristics. And, unlike many other cognac houses, we make separate products from each. We strive for fine and elegant tastes, but also make sure we preserve the ‘montant,’ which is persistence of aromas. Nuances of aromas can be classified into two groups:
The first is fruity and floral, which produces a smell that is very similar to the vineyard flower, the lime blossom as well as shades of pear and apricot aromas.
The second is the ‘bouquet,’ which is where we get our powerful full bodied, complex aromas."
She adds, "Chateau de Montifaud makes a variety of younger VS and VSOP grade (10-12 months aging) cognacs as well as older cognacs such as Napoléon and XO (minimum 6 years aging).
The older ones, she says, "contain rich aromas that are achieved by cooking the fruit -- and the result is bouquets of prunes, nuts, spices, dried fruit and leather."
The men like to call the Heritage Maurice Vallet, the house’s top product, the ‛cig
ar box‛ for its powerful aroma," Catherine adds with a wink and smile (and, of course, a nod to her nose!).
Hennessy is the largest cognac producer. They make many types of cognacs targeted at the tastes of their primary markets. But the process of creating their many brands still goes back to the same slow and meticulous process of smells, mixing, blending and living history as it does at the smaller producers.
When it comes to enjoying cognac, Maurice Hennessy of the 7th generation of the Hennessy Cognac dynasty adds, "Tasting cognac does not simply smell. Tasting cognac is also feeling it, balancing it, giving it some substance, some history, hopefully enjoying it. Seven generations of the same family have been tasting and blending at Hennessy. It is more than a smell, it is reading History."
Unique Storage
Unlike wine cellars, cognac cellars tend to be at or near ground level and close to the Charente River, meaning that they are dank and humid and subject to climatic changes, -- and even floods -- over the years.
A by-product of the humidity in all cognac cellars is fungus. The walls and ceilings are black with the mold torula compniacensis, a fungus created by the mixture of humidity and the 2-3% alcohol that evaporates from the cognac barrels each year, which cognac producers call "The Angel's Share."
It is the equivalent of more than twenty million bottles per year that disappear into the atmosphere -- a high price that Cognac producers do not hesitate to pay in their quest for perfection.
Tax agents in the Cognac region also find the fungus to be their friend. They fly helicopters through the region and make a note of all roofs with this distinct black fungus. They then compare their finding with the tax records and determine if anybody is aging cognac and not paying taxes!
In his elegant but dank cellars, Bernard Hine, of the sixth generation to head the Hine cognac house -- which is the exclusive cognac purveyor to Queen Elizabeth II -- proudly shows the flood marks from various times the Hine cellars have been inundated. "Each flood improved our product."
And the Hine house knows about how cellars influence the taste of cognac. Each year, a small number of barrels is sent to Bristol, England, where they age for at least twenty years. They are known as "Early Landed Cognacs," which Hine claims are more adapted to British tastes due to the familiar smells of the English air.
Mr. Hine, now the senior spirit of the Cognac region, is proud to show off the firm’s refined and also vintage cognacs, a trend that he started in the region. "Our quality comes from the superior Grande Champagne and Petite Champagne wines and the unique smells of our ancient cellars."
