For the end of the year, Hennessy has teamed up with Théodor and designer Mathieu Lehanneur to create Fine de Cognac & Thé seasonal cocktails and dedicated limited edition accessories.
FINE DE COGNAC & THÉ
When you’re a master blender for Hennessy, there’s one passion that never leaves you. A passion for the land, for nature, for the fruits of man’s labor. You have to walk through the vineyards in the early hours of the morning to understand this. The emotion that comes from the softness of a dewy sun, the anxiety of a too-gray sky, the green scent of the harvest…
This world of the earth, inherent to cognac, finds particularly apt resonance when confronted with other professions entirely devoted to nature. The world of tea had always appealed to me. A mysterious world of codes, whose forms of expression seemed to me at once so clear and so indecipherable.
Among the cognacs in the Hennessy “collection”, Fine de Cognac seemed to me the closest and most complementary to this organoleptic semantics. Faced with tea, Fine de Cognac would be able to reveal new notes, while allowing tea to reveal its own identity. The herbal notes of cognac would respond to the herbal notes of tea, the full-bodied, spicy notes of tea would stir up the floral notes of eaux-de-vie. So I invited Guillaume Leleu, the young creator of the Theodor Tea House, to work with me on this alliance, to create cocktails that would both discover the beauty of Fine de Cognac and let the tea blossom on the palate.
Through this experience, Fine de Cognac reveals all the finesse of its character, playing on fruity and citrus notes, while tea awakens its sweetness, in a woody, slightly spicy burst. All in delicacy.
Yann Fillioux, master blender at Maison Hennessy
and Tea
A quest I’m pursuing through the encounters I’ve made along the way, when the poetry and truth of tea gardens escape onto the paths of freedom to follow only one star, that of pleasure. I created Theodor with the strength of traditional tea cultures, through its Victorian and Asian codes, as well as the pretention of thinking that we had to write a present for this beverage which, more than ever, links people together.
I like the idea of mixing it with other grammars, so that it reveals itself and immerses itself in its time. But these alliances only make sense when they are right, and when they find certain resonances between them. The alliance with Hennessy Fine de Cognac is of this order. When, beyond their origins and shared values, these two worlds call out to and respond to each other.
To understand Fine de Cognac, I had to go back to the drawing board, trying to define the notes I discovered on tasting, to detect their structure. The desire to pair it with tea then became obvious.
Guillaume Leleu, tea master and founder of Maison Theodor
Hennessy Fine de Cognac responds…
Through the delicate brilliance of Fine de Cognac, Hennessy offers a very personal vision of what a cognac is: the fruit of harmonious blending, like a bouquet of elegant eaux-de-vie, brought together by the master blender and his Tasting Committee to reveal a broad palette of aromas.
A fruity and floral palette, which develops different registers depending on how it is tasted: dry, on the rocks, extended or in cocktails, Fine de Cognac surprises the connoisseur with the breadth of its expressions. Its alliance with Tea is the most dazzling demonstration of this.
… to Tea:
Sublimated by a handful of tea masters around the world, tea is a thousand-year-old spice that unfolds a universe of infinite richness, so well does it know how to play with style while adapting to individual tastes. Natural or flavored, morning tea, 4pm tea, spring tea, Christmas tea… every moment of tea is synonymous with welcome and pleasure. All over the world, tea is offered to guests according to very precise rituals, always different from one culture to another.
Cocktails – Fine de Cognac & Tea
The encounter between Fine de Cognac and Tea has given rise to exclusive cocktail recipes, designed to combine the complementary flavors and aromas of Fine de Cognac and the world of tea. Offering vegetal nuances reminiscent of certain Fine de Cognac eaux-de-vie, tea adds a subtle, new note tinged with spicy flavours.
Fine/Je ne sais quoi – Autumn Recipe
To make this cocktail, Yann Fillioux and Guillaume Leleu recommend Maison Theodor’s “Je ne sais quoi” tea: built on a full-bodied Chinese green tea, this tea delivers a green note combined with the elegance of various vanilla essences – from the West Indies, Madagascar and Indonesia – which add a sweet, gourmand and voluptuous note.
For the simplified version of this cocktail, this tea can be replaced by a vanilla green tea.
INGREDIENTS
45 ml Hennessy Fine de Cognac
30 ml Theodor “Je ne sais quoi” green tea
10 ml apple liqueur
25 ml lemon juice
PREPARATION
20 ml sugar syrup 10 ml egg white
2 drops aromatic bitter Lemon zest
Place all ingredients in shaker. Shake and strain contents into a glass filled with ice cubes. Squeeze lemon zest over the top of the glass and garnish with lemon zest.
Fine/Royal – Recette d’Hiver
To make this cocktail, Yann Fillioux and Guillaume Leleu recommend Maison Theodor’s “Earl Grey Royal” tea: a blend of top-quality black teas from China and India, Earl Grey Royal blossoms on a note of floral, lemony bergamot with endearing fragrances. Blueberry blossoms link the bergamot fragrances to the tannic notes of the black teas. For a simplified version of this cocktail, this tea can be replaced by Earl Grey black tea.
INGREDIENTS
50 ml Hennessy Fine de Cognac 30 ml Theodor “earl grey royal” tea 5 ml cherry liqueur
1 tsp black cherries
PREPARATION
10 ml cranberry juice
1 drop aromatic bitter Orange zest
Place all ingredients in shaker. Shake and pour the contents through a fine sieve into the glass. Squeeze the orange zest over the glass and garnish with a maraschino cherry.
Fine/On va se revoir – Recipe du Printemps
To make this cocktail, Yann Fillioux and Guillaume Leleu recommend Maison Theodor’s “On va se revoir” tea: the balance of this blend comes from the selected Chinese green tea, which is very specific and reveals a hint of “fresh herb” bitterness, counterbalanced by a note of fresh Moroccan mint, not peppery, rounded off with Italian bergamot and spiked with Madagascar pepper to open up the taste buds. For the simplified version of this cocktail, this tea can be replaced by a green mint tea.
INGREDIENTS
50 ml Hennessy Fine de Cognac
30 ml Theodor “On va se revoir” green tea 7 ml sugar syrup
PREPARATION
Rub the rim of the glass with the ginger. Pour cognac, tea infusion and sugar syrup into shaker. Shake and pour the contents through a fine sieve into the glass. Garnish with a mint leaf.
Fine/Pêché mignon – Summer recipe
To make this cocktail, Yann Fillioux and Guillaume Leleu recommend Maison Theodor’s “Pêché Mignon” tea: with its summery spirit, this blend relies on an aromatic base of slightly bitter Sencha green tea, which naturally reveals a very floral dewy note. At the same time, this tea reveals a note of southern French orchards: vine peach, melon and a hint of strawberry, enhanced by a splash of red passion fruit that exacerbates its exotic fragrance.
For the simplified version of this cocktail, this tea can be replaced by an exotic fruit green tea. INGREDIENTS
50 ml Hennessy Fine de Cognac
30 ml Theodor “Pêché Mignon” green tea 10 ml lemon juice
10 ml sugar syrup
10 ml egg white
Lemon zest
PREPARATION
Shake and strain contents into a glass filled with ice cubes. Squeeze the lemon zest over the glass and garnish. Place all ingredients in the shaker.
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