Grosperrin 'Cognac De Collection' 1980 aged 29yrs, Grande Champagne 50.2% 700ml

Jean Grosperrin began his career as a distiller in Lorraine in the early 1980s, before moving south to Cognac to work as a distiller and then as a broker — the trade role of finding old Cognac stocks held by small estate-distillers and matching them with houses needing inventory. In 1994 he transitioned into wholesale, and in 1999 he set up Cognac Grosperrin as his own house. The founding decision was a reaction against the standard Cognac trade model: rare batches of old eaux-de-vie that had been carefully aged by individual estates were routinely absorbed into the commercial multi-estate blends of the major houses, losing their vintage and provenance specificity.

Grosperrin's model is to bottle each acquired batch separately under its original vintage and Cru classification — Bons Bois, Fins Bois, Petite Champagne, Grande Champagne, Borderies — and to release them at cask strength rather than reduced to commercial proof. The labels carry distillation year and the cellar history. Jean's son Guilhem took over in 2004 at 23 years old; in 2013 Axelle Grosperrin joined as brand representative. The current cellar holds Cognacs distilled from the 1940s onwards, with ongoing releases of rare twentieth-century vintage stocks the family has acquired across the founding-and-now-25-year history.