Francois Voyer 12 Years Double Cask Cognac

Francois Voyer 12 Years Double Cask Cognac

A 12 year old Grande Champagne 1er Cru cognac from the From Barrel Selection range, bottled at 43.3% vol. from a 350 litre barrel. It is an XO level cognac in age, and the interest here is the wood: after ten years in French oak, the eau-de-vie spent a further two years in a cask built from Swiss oak.

Pierre Vaudon, cellar master at Maison François Voyer, selected Swiss staves for this second maturation. The wood was air-dried outdoors for three years from July 2018, then given to cooper Jean-Noël Pelletant, and the cognac went into that second cask in May 2023. Two casks were built for this bottling, one from the Bussigny forest and one from the forest of St Sulpice, both in Switzerland. The Bussigny cask is now finished and the house has moved on to the St Sulpice cask, with no difference in taste between the two. Second maturation is a technique that has been reshaping brown spirits generally, and the cask crossover trend explains why a finishing wood changes a spirit as much as it does.

The François Voyer house sits in Verrières, in the heart of Grande Champagne, and has been distilling and ageing its own eaux-de-vie since the 19th century. Cellar master Pierre Vaudon runs the ageing cellars, and the From Barrel Selection range is his own project: single barrels picked out of the stocks and bottled as they are, with the terroir, the barrel volume and the village of origin printed on the label.

The house bottles these casks to order, in small runs, so the eaux-de-vie stay in wood until a bottling is called for. Every bottle is numbered by hand.

This one is for drinkers who already know Grande Champagne and want to taste what a different oak does to it, and for anyone building a shelf of single barrel cognacs.

Presentation of the bottle

A 70cl clear glass bottle with a punted base and a dark neck capsule carrying the F. Voyer signature. The silver front label is framed in red for this expression, with the house drawn in line art behind a large red 12. A second label below it prints the technical detail: terroir, the two maturations, barrel volume, hand written bottle number, alcohol and bottle size.

How to Drink

Serve neat at room temperature in a tulip glass, and give it ten minutes in the glass before the first sip. At 43.3% it needs no water. It works well after a meal, with dark chocolate or a walnut tart, or alongside a cigar given the finish.