For another cool event wrangled by Meigo in her cute little downstairs venue off MinChuan E Rd., Cognac Park sent their marketing director for ASIA, Christophe Wu, down from SHANGHAI together with Uber mixologist Naomi Schimek in from Southern California to help resuscitate Cognac as a go-to ingredient for cocktails.

Cocktail culture is currently on a surge in Taipei and elsewhere, and wine people might ask WWWHHYYY! Someone the other day explained it very simply: cocktails are photogenic, while let’s face it, wine in photos is boring, unless of course you’re a dedicated geek like me and most of my friends. But do the Instagrammer-cocktail-photo makers really care what it tastes like, or just how it looks and how the selfie catches the backlit bottles and lip-gloss smiles of intoxicated revelers? If you still care about the liquid in the glass, then Cognac may offer a legitimate crossing-point as it is so much more than a flavored spirit.

Anyway, we started off with a Cognac Punch, the original classic translated from India 400 years ago. It has five ingredients: spirits, in this case Cognac, sugar, lemon, water and spices. No one thought to ask what the spices were, but it was smooth and refreshing, for me a little sweet.

Then we tasted 3 cognacs neat from Cognac Park’s portfolio. As you might expect, the most expensive, Park Cigar Blend, was the smoothest, even showing a little rancio but still quite delicate compared to other famous brands. The best story came with the Park Borderies, for it comes from the lesser-known and smallest subregion of Cognac and it was luminous in the glass, showing milder, more floral aromas along with delicate caramel and vanilla, presumably derived from 6 months finishing in Japanese oak from the Mizunara forest. According to Christophe Wu, the tasting-marker for this finish is the aroma of violets. Tessendier releases just 2220, 700ml bottles of this expression and at slightly higher alcohol of 43.5%. So it was an extraordinary pleasure to enjoy the lingering apricot finish of this rare Cognac, but would I, should I make a punch from it? What a travesty that would be. What fool would pay the premium for this lovely creation and then cover it with sugar and lemon and ground spices?

Cocktails were invented 400 years ago to mask the harsh unpalatable character of Arak from India. They saw another surge during prohibition in the USA, when speakeasies needed to cover the often dangerously low quality of the alcohol they served. But now we enjoy the fruits of evolution. Distilled beverages have reached new pinnacles of sophistication, and in fairness to Cognac Park, I don’t believe they intend us to use their fine and rare expressions in cocktails. Their argument seems to be that even entry-level cognac is better for mixed drinks than any other brandy. Regrettably though, the Instagram Philistines are driving the industry, and who knows how they will ever learn to appreciate these delicate flowers of civilization?