Image 1 of 1
Fellow Drammers!
We’re excited to announce that on Tuesday, January 19th at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern, we’ll be welcoming Philippe Giraud, the founder of Alfred GIRAUD French Malt Whisky. In addition to tasting their two core range releases (Heritage and Harmonie), we’re honored to say that we’ll be the first group in the United States to try their brand new Voyage limited edition release (very small quantities of it exist — only 429 bottles globally). This is really an interesting brand — it was founded in 2012 as a whisky company but their roots go back 5 generations in cognac, starting in 1873 when Louis Giraud worked as a cask maker at Drouet, and then ensured that his son, the namesake Alfred Giraud, was trained there as well. Our members will recall that Drouet is imported to the US by Raj Sabharwal, and we had a chance to try their Paradis de Famille cognac at our Spotlight on Glass Revolutions event back in August, and holy crap was that good. But I digress.
Alfred went on to be the cellar master at “a maison du cognac” — the promotional materials don’t say which, but a Whisky Advocate article from last year explains he was actually the cellar master at Remy Martin cognac for over 30 years (hey now!). His son, Andre Giraud trained under him, and he too was a cellar master at Remy for another 30 years. The next generation, Jean-Pierre Giraud, also worked the bulk of his career at Remy, including 6 years as their Managing Director, and it was his son (and our guest speaker) Philippe Giraud who broke with tradition (in the best possible way from our perspective here at Drammers!) to move the family into the whisky business. A remarkable background!
So, of course Alfred GIRAUD French Malt Whisky is drawing on their generations of expertise in cognac, and that means they’re masters at blending. Cognacs often use a zillion different distillates (50+!) for a specific release, so blends take on a whole new meaning for this family. Now keep in mind, these were designed from the outset as limited premium products — their two core-range products are Heritage (unpeated, 45.9% abv) priced in the $155/bottle range and Harmony (peated, 46.1% abv) priced in the $190/bottle range. So, this is clearly a bold pricing move and with limited quantities to match, with only a thousand bottles total for sale of the Heritage in the US in 2019 and only a few hundred of the Harmony (we don’t have 2020 numbers, but presumably similar - their materials indicate that the annual total production is 23 casks of Heritage and only 7 of Harmony). We’ll have to confirm with Philippe, but we believe these are currently only available in France and New York, with plans to make them available eventually in London, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. So yeah, heavily allocated and very limited.
So what’s in it? They have sourced and blended 3 different French Single Malts — two of these are known, one is an unnamed cognac distiller. Of the named distillery sources, one is our friends at Rozelieures, who we had the privilege of welcoming as guest speakers at our kickoff event last April! The other is Warenghem, a distillery in Brittany that we’ve tried at our Paris chapter meetings and it’s also very interesting. Note that they’ve also started producing their own distillate (although they didn’t build their own distillery, they partnered with Society des Vins et Eaux-de-Vie to make their whisky at the Saint-Palais Distillery, which produced Cognac from October to March, and then whisky and other spirits the other half of the year. We’ll have to ask Philippe how that’s coming along, but our understanding is that they hope to blend their own distillate into their releases in the future, though they always plan to source other spirits and focus on blending as the core DNA of the company.
Alfred GIRAUD calls their releases “Triple Malts” and notes that in addition to being blended together from 3 sources, they use 3 cask types. The great majority of the casks used in the blend are ex-cognac casks that held very old cognac, which makes sense. When Philippe launched the company, he hired out of retirement two cognac masters, his uncle Andre mentioned above, who is in his 90s — and in addition to his 80 years in the business, he brings another key asset — his wife owns a Limousin forest from which they source wood for a limited amount of Limousin casks. Our members will remember from our World Whisky Day event last May that we’ve touched on this subject before, when we welcomed Brenne French Single Malt founder Allison Parc, who has made the rare Limousin casks her whisky’s signature. Philippe also hired out of retirement, Georges Clot, another former longtime Remy cellar master, who serves as their master blender. The third cask type is American oak (unclear if these are new oak or ex-bourbon or both).
Excitingly, Alfred GIRAUD has just launched their first special edition single cask, Voyage, and we’re honored to be the first group in America to try it! It is a blend of two single malts, one a single malt matured in a French Robinia cask and another matured in a Sauternes cask before they were blended together in this single cask. Right now this is only available in France is our understanding.
So that’s our event! Very exciting and we hope you can join us! A huge thank you to Zack Boiko and a shout out to Louis Chaignaud, their brand ambassador in Mexico City who we met with there last month and are working on getting an event set up there as well!
Cheers!
Charlie