With Cognac, it’s all about terroir
Cognac begins as wine. Like any wine, it’s shaped in part by the environment in which it grows. Soil, aspect and climate, among other things, combine to create a unique environment, what the French call terroir. A wine, in turn, is a distinct expression of that terroir.
In the Cognac region, terroir is, for the most part, about chalk. Geologically, the region is part of the Aquitaine basin. It consists of a series of marine sedimentary deposits laid down over 200 million years, beginning at the height of the dinosaur age in the Jurassic period.
The repeated incursion of shallow seas left alternating layers of chalk and limestone. Over time, erosion and tectonic forces scrambled those layers. Those areas where chalk layers appeared on the surface would become the heart of cognac production.
Between 1848 and 1857, a local geologist named Henri Coquand conducted a geological survey of the main cognac-producing regions. This was the first scientific assessment of the geology of the area.