In a story that mimics that of the top grower-producers in Champagne (vs. the Grandes Marques houses), the remarkable quality and distinctive, vinous style of Tesseron’s predominantly XO Cognacs have allowed this artisanal producer to carve out a niche among the giants of Cognac. In some ways, you could think of Tesseron as an Egly-Ouriet or Agrapart of the Cognac world. Like the top growers of Champagne, the rise of this producer has nothing to do with advertising or traditional marketing and everything to do with a perfectionist’s eye for quality. It has certainly helped that the Tesseron family holds one of the largest collections of ancient Cognacs in their legendary 13th-century Paradis cellars—once part of the local Abbey. In fact, before they started releasing small batches of Cognac under their own label (in 2003), the Tesseron family had been a highly reputed supplier of XO Cognacs to the large houses for over a century. Max Allen’s quote above points to Tesseron’s reputation as the wine lover’s cognac. First and foremost, the Tesseron family are brilliant grape growers and proprietors of the progressive Fifth Growth, Château Pontet-Canet in Pauillac. They previously owned Château Lafon-Rochet in Saint-Estèphe, which was sold at the end of 2021. Then there are the spirits themselves, expertly distilled and aged in-house, which offer the complexity of a great, fully mature wine with velvety depth and ethereal finesse.