Alexandre Gabriel tells Oli Dodd how Ferrand Cognac is using history in an attempt to cut back the red tape, regenerate the category and celebrate its heritage
Cognac is in the midst of a generational downturn. After a decade of expansion, exports last year fell to their lowest level since 2009, according to the BNIC, with the previous year seeing a US$1bn decline in the value of the segment according to the IWSR.
The driving forces are relatively clear. The category had positioned itself such that, of its 139 international markets, only two truly moved the needle: China and the US. In 2024, the North America and Far East markets accounted for over 70% of exports according to the BNIC. So in 2025, when the value of exports to the US, Canada and Mexico declined by 34%, and to the Far East region by 23.1%, the impact was seismic.
The results are stark. Now sitting on a glut of eaux-de-vie, producers in the region have taken to uprooting vines, the first coordinated removal since the 1990s, in an attempt to maintain price floors.
But for Alexandre Gabriel, master blender at Ferrand Cognac, this storm must be used to re-evaluate the category and some restrictive practices that have prevented cognac from keeping pace with the times.
“There’s a quote from Kennedy – he said you should repair your roof when the sun is shining, but everyone repairs it when it’s raining,” he tells Drinks International.
“My grandfather would say ‘success is the worst advisor’ – when you’re successful, don’t make your biggest decisions. When things are going well, I know we’re going to make a mistake. Usually, when people make rules, they solidify what‘s being done at that moment. And Cognac is pregnant with that.”
Gabriel is referring to the Cognac AOC amendments of 1983, which outline the ageing requirements of the spirit and decreed that: “Cognac is aged exclusively in casks made of oak, traditionally from the Troncais and Limousin forests.”
“We’ve boxed ourselves in,” says Gabriel. “20,000 people live in Cognac. As a community, including the farmers, we are 70,000. We have 100 companies making barrels.
“As a master blender, before 1983 you could use barrels made of chestnut or acacia. There are still guys in Cognac who can make those barrels, and it’s part of our heritage, but it hasn’t been allowed by the AOC since 1983.
“I do a lot of historical research because, as well as meeting my peers in person, I’m trying to meet my peers in history. So I purchased cubic metres of documents that follow every day since 1893. My wife, Debbie, was going through the archives at the ancestral home of Maison Ferrand and found a local paper from 1912 with a piece titled The Real Cognac selling barrels of chestnut and acacia. They used chestnut and acacia, barrels made of cherry tree, and so on. It was possible until 1983. Cognac has been produced since the early 1600s; 1983 is yesterday.”
As a result, Maison Ferrand has been drawing on its experience of cask maturation in other categories to explore how the eaux-de-vie from the region interplay with various ageing techniques.
“I have a line called the Renegade Barrel, and I’m exploring old techniques,” says Gabriel.
“I’m using chestnut barrels, acacia barrels, rum barrels, even ageing cognac in Barbados. We make 20 barrels of the Renegade Barrel at a time, and it’s so much fun. We sell those in five minutes, but if we did 200 barrels, we would struggle because it’s called eau-de-vie de vin; we can’t even call it brandy.”
Historical documents
While the Renegade Barrel bottlings can’t carry the cognac name, another release, Double Cask, can use Pedro Ximenez casks and still fly the cognac banner.
“By going back into documents from 1923, I was able to show that we can use wine and fortified wine barrels within the AOC”, he explains. “We’re the first ones to redo this.”
And now the roof is leaking, a more progressive attitude towards experimentation is starting to look more appealing to some of the category’s producers.
“I think that the makers in Cognac now realise we have been resting on our laurels,” he says. “Cognac is technically at a high level; there’s no doubt about that. We use these tiny pot stills; the grape farming is beautiful. There’s so much going for the category.
“Cognac is high school on steroids. We recently spent two days together, and people started asking me about barrels. I respect that we’re talking now. It took me 37 years, but in the history of Cognac, it’s a blip. I think people are willing, of course, not everybody, but what I would love is if there was a consensus that you have the freedom to experiment. You just put it on your label.”
So, what’s next for the category? Remove all the red tape and start pushing out toffee cognacs? Well, some regulations aren’t just in place to spoil the party.
“What I don’t want us to do is anything that denatures what cognac is,” says Gabriel. “I believe a spirit is like a musical theme – you can improvise on the theme, but if you change the theme, it’s something different. The gin theme is dominant juniper berries. At one point, people were making very sweet, fruity gins that didn’t taste like juniper berries – I don’t call that gin.
“The cognac theme is grape-based, distilled in small pot stills, and we have a heritage of 400 years that we can build on. We don’t have any need to make a pink cognac. But I’m excited. There’s so much heritage to explore and celebrate. When there are difficulties, it’s regenerative. It’s a beautiful thing.”
