French wine bar Western Sydney Tag

Bastille Day at Heritage Lounge — French Cognac, Armagnac and Wine in Parramatta

France has been producing brandy in the Charente since the 16th century — when Dutch merchants, seeking to reduce the bulk and preserve the quality of wine for the sea voyage north, began distilling the local Ugni Blanc grape into what they called brandewijn. Burnt wine. The result, aged in the oak casks that gave it colour and complexity, became cognac. The houses that were founded in the centuries that followed — Hennessy in 1765, Martell in 1715, Hine in...