Cpt. Cognac - Nicolas Palazzi is bottling artisanal Cognac - way to go!

Email from Captain Cognac - Bottling another Barrel of finest Paul-Marie & Fils artisanal Cognac




The pictures:

  • Bottles are all primed by adding a few ounces of cognac and shaking them to clean up the inside
  • Once cleaned, bottles are corked to prevent anything from contaminating the inside while waiting for bottling
  • They are then filled up using this old school system I have a friend of mine (cooper) made for me: a 400 liter cask converted into a "bottling-cask" so I can fill it up from the top, let the cognac settle, still have it breath and interact with the wood and....bottle, one at a time, by gravity. Very slow. But very efficient.
  • Once filled, bottles are taken one by one and level is adjusted with a pipette
  • Overall speed is mind-blowing: an astonishing 20 to 22 bottles per hour are done this way. So fast a classic camera could barely catch my moves. Ok, may be I am exaggerating a bit


You can see below the waxing and labeling process of this July's single cask bottling.

  • Bottles are dipped into melted wax, let to drip to get rid of the excess, slowly turned to even up the wax. Then dipped into cold water in a circular motion to solidify and give the smooth aspect to the wax
  • Once cleaned, the bottles are carefully labelled. Then boxed up
  • 200 bottles. 4 full days. Done.


Again, nothing revolutionary here, just very traditional work. But sometimes, it is good to go back to the basics.

* Note from jrgmyr: Nothing to add - way to go! Here you find Nicolas: www.pmspirits.com - Twitter: @CaptnCognac










Disclosure: Nicolas send me once a bottle of fine Cognac for free, after I wrote on this blog about Cognac. It  was one of the finest Cognac drops I ever sipped. He came over to Hamburg, brought more samples and we discussed what he is doing. We also talked business, many ideas we had about bringing good handmade Cognac to Bar and Guests. We had the idea of running a Cognac Seminar in New York, which I f**ked up time wise, but some day we will do it. We had lots of Wine for Dinner and I am not 100% sure who paid the check. Last month he send me another bottle for free, not Cognac,  but great Pineau de Charentres. I think, that Nicolas is a great person, doing great products. So, all this may have influenced my writing about him - just to let you know!

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