1989 Jean Fillioux Millesime Grande Champagne Cognac (700ml)

Tasting note: [15ml sample] One of a series in Fillioux's vintage selections, harvested and distilled in 1989. Brilliant amber gold, this offers lots of fig and ripe yellow fruits on the nose with a honeyed core. Deliciously rich and rounded while maintaining a fine balancing act between oak, stone fruit and sweet spices, the finish is briefly fleshy and succulent, then sweetly oaky with lingering pipe tobacco and rancio. Matured in French loose grain oak. 43% Alc./Vol.

Jean Fillioux's fourth generation family run estate consists of fifty acres in Grande Champagne's 'golden triangle': Verrières, Angeac-Champagne and Juillac-le-Coq. Founded in 1880 by Honoré Fillioux, his great grandson, Pascal inherited the estate in 1982. Admiringly referred to by his neighbors as the “Magician of Aromas.", Pascal remains a firm believer in the traditional methods of previous generations. To some extent, the house is a one man show. From soil care to maturation, bottling to labeling – not one area of the process happens without the supervision of Pascal J. Fillioux. Most of the cognacs produced here are aged slightly longer in new oak than is common.