The Cognac Film Festival: 13 Films the Cognac World Would Make
Every great cognac house has a story worth telling on screen. A founder who crossed an ocean. A family split between tradition and ambition. A barrel hunter who found something he was never meant to find. A Norwegian who ended up in Jarnac. A vigneron who refused to spray his vines for thirty years and was proved right. We took thirteen of the most extraordinary figures in cognac, founders, cellar masters, heirs, obsessives, and matched each with a film genre, a plot, and the bottle that tells their story. Welcome to the Cognac Film Festival. Every bottle is available. Every story is true. Mostly.
1. Wild Geese: Hennessy XO Extra Old
Genre: Period Blockbuster Epic | Tagline: “An Irishman fought for France. Then he gave it something worth keeping.”
Protagonist: Richard Hennessy (1724 to 1800), born in Killavullen, County Cork, Ireland. An officer in the Irish Brigade of the French army, one of the celebrated Wild Geese, the thousands of Irish exiles who crossed the Channel to serve Louis XV after the Jacobite defeat. He fought in multiple campaigns across France before settling in the Charente region in 1765 and founding what would become the world’s most recognised cognac house.
Plot: When the wars end and his regiment disbands, Richard Hennessy has a choice: return to an Ireland that has no place for him, or stay in the country he fought for. He stays. With a soldier’s pension, a nose for oak, and absolute certainty, he builds a cognac house from nothing on the banks of the Charente. His army: discipline. His weapon: patience. His legacy: two and a half centuries of the world’s best-selling XO. A sweeping period blockbuster about an Irish exile who gave France something worth keeping, and the world something worth pouring.
The bottle: Hennessy XO Extra Old Cognac. The house Richard Hennessy built, in its most iconic expression. Dark fruit, spiced oak, a finish that outlasts most conversations.
2. Jersyman: Martell Cordon Bleu Extra
Genre: Period Drama | Tagline: “He arrived with nothing. He built everything.”
Protagonist: Jean Martell (1694 to 1753), born in Saint-Brelade, Jersey. In 1715, at the age of 21, he crossed from the Channel Islands to the Charente with a battered satchel and a letter of introduction nobody would honour. He spoke with the wrong accent, came from the wrong island, and had exactly one plan. He founded Martell in 1715, the oldest of the great cognac houses still in operation today.
Plot: A young man steps off a boat in a foreign country with nothing but ambition and poor social connections. The merchants of Cognac look past him. The aristocrats ignore him. The nĂ©gociants won’t buy. Over four decades, Jean Martell rewrites every rule about who gets to build an empire in France. A period drama about the particular courage of arriving somewhere and refusing to leave until the place is different from how you found it.
The bottle: Martell Cordon Bleu Extra. The house’s most celebrated expression since 1912. Fine Champagne and Borderies eaux-de-vie, a nose of crystallised orange and praline, the defining Martell signature of dried flowers and spiced plum.
3. Uncorked: Prunier XO
Genre: French Family Comedy | Tagline: “Thirty-five years of patience. One very messy retirement.”
Protagonists: StĂ©phane Burnez, long-time director of the historic Maison Prunier in the Grande Champagne, and his two daughters Claire Burnez and her sister, the next generation, with very different ideas about what “next” means. Maison Prunier is one of the oldest cognac houses still in family hands, producing exclusively from Grande Champagne, the finest appellation of the Charente.
Plot: Stéphane announces his retirement on harvest day, the single worst possible moment. By nightfall both daughters are redesigning his office, a Japanese buyer has appeared unannounced, someone has reversed a forklift through the new barrel room, and the dog has eaten the succession documents. A warm, chaotic comedy about a family that makes something very refined in a very undignified way. Co-directed by Claire Burnez, naturally. The cat survives. The paperwork does not.
The bottle: Prunier XO. 100% Grande Champagne, aged a minimum of 15 years, presented in the house’s iconic hand-blown carafe. Walnut, dried apricot, and the unmistakable mineral depth of the Champagne terroir.
4. Unmapped: Grosperrin N°76 Grande Champagne
Genre: Obsessive Indie Thriller | Tagline: “He doesn’t make cognac. He rescues it. This time, he should have left it alone.”
Protagonist: Guilhem Grosperrin, négociant, obsessive, self-described cartographe du cognac. For over twenty years, Guilhem has mapped every forgotten barrel in the Charente, buying aged eau-de-vie directly from small farms and elderly producers who often do not fully grasp what they have been sitting on. He pays honest prices, asks no questions, and bottles without additives. His releases are numbered, never repeated, and spoken of in hushed tones by collectors worldwide.
Plot: A farmer calls. An old relative has died and left a stone cellar full of things nobody can name. Guilhem drives out, as he always does. But this cellar is not on any property record. And one of the barrels, sealed in 1923, marked with a symbol Guilhem has seen once before, in a different cellar, twenty years ago, was clearly never meant to be found. An indie thriller for people who understand that the most dangerous obsessions are the ones that started with a phone call.
The bottle: Grosperrin N°76 Grande Champagne. A single-cask, additive-free Grande Champagne sourced and bottled by Guilhem Grosperrin. Extremely limited. Complex, long, and impossible to replicate. The kind of cognac that makes you put the glass down and sit quietly for a moment.
5. Oak and Cane: Ferrand 10 Generations
Genre: Globe-trotting Adventure Biopic | Tagline: “One obsession. Ten generations. Many worlds.”
Protagonist: Alexandre Gabriel, entrepreneur, distiller, and one of the most restlessly creative minds in the spirits world. In 1989, at the age of 27, he purchased the historic ChĂąteau de Bonbonnet estate in Grande Champagne, home of Cognac Ferrand, which had been largely dormant. He then went on to found Plantation Rum, Citadelle Gin, and several other acclaimed spirits enterprises, building a multi-continent portfolio driven by a single philosophy: that the world’s great distilled spirits are in conversation with each other.
Plot: A 27-year-old buys a crumbling chateau that nobody else wants. What follows is twenty years of decisions that look like madness from the outside and feel like inevitability from the inside, cognac in France, rum in Barbados and Jamaica, gin in Dunkirk, partnerships in Japan. An adventure biopic about what happens when someone refuses to be told what industry they are in. The title refers to the two raw materials at the heart of his empire: French oak for cognac, Caribbean sugarcane for rum.
The bottle: Ferrand Cognac 10 Generations. A tribute to the ten generations of the Ferrand family who tended the Grande Champagne terroir before Alexandre Gabriel arrived. Rich, complex, and structured: candied orange, grilled hazelnuts, warm spice. A cognac that has earned its name.
6. Hors d’Ăge: Bache Gabrielsen Hors d’Age Grande Champagne
Genre: Existential Family Drama | Tagline: “Thirty years in France. Four days to explain it.”
Protagonist: Hervé Bache-Gabrielsen, the current generation of the Bache-Gabrielsen family, a Franco-Norwegian cognac dynasty founded in Jarnac in 1905 by Thomas Bache-Gabrielsen, a Norwegian who came to the Charente and never left. The house has produced cognac from Grande Champagne ever since, maintaining a singular identity shaped by both Norse precision and Charentais patience.
Plot: A far distant relative passes away in Oslo. HervĂ© flies back for the first time in eight years. His Norwegian cousins have never understood why he stayed in France, what a cognac house means, what he has spent his life building. Around a kitchen table over four winter days, with snow on the windows and the remnants of a funeral meal between them, he must explain a life they cannot see. He brings one bottle of Hors d’Age. By the end of the four days, nobody needs to ask any more questions. A Bergman-paced drama about identity, inheritance, and the things we build that cannot be translated.
Hors d’Ăąge: beyond age, is both the name of the cognac category and the title of this film. A bottle and a story that exist outside of time.
The bottle: Bache Gabrielsen Hors d’Age Grande Champagne. 100% Grande Champagne, aged well beyond the legal minimum, with a complexity that rewards patience. Rancio, dried fig, toasted oak, and a finish that does not hurry.
Shop Bache Gabrielsen Hors d’Age →
7. Terroir: Pasquet L’Organic 07 Grande Champagne
Genre: Conviction Drama | Tagline: HOLDOUT.
Protagonist: Jean Pasquet, organic and biodynamic pioneer in the Grande Champagne appellation, and one of the most quietly radical figures in cognac. Pasquet converted his domaine in Segonzac to organic viticulture decades before the cognac industry considered it commercially viable, producing additive-free, estate-grown cognacs from some of the finest Grande Champagne terroir in existence. His son, now working alongside him, continues the philosophy.
Plot: Before certification existed, before it was fashionable, before anyone in the Charente thought it was commercially possible, Jean Pasquet stopped spraying his vines. The cooperative told him he was wrong. The négociants said his yields would collapse. The industry said nothing, which was worse. Thirty years later, his domaine in Segonzac produces some of the finest additive-free Grande Champagne cognac in existence. A film about the particular stubbornness required to be right before anyone else is ready to agree.
The bottle: Pasquet L’Organic 07 Grande Champagne. Certified organic, additive-free, estate-grown in the Grande Champagne. A VSOP aged seven years minimum, with white flowers, fresh citrus, and the clean, mineral finish that only Grande Champagne terroir produces when left completely undisturbed.
8. 1763: Hardy XO Rare Tradition
Genre: Gothic Drama | Tagline: “Two hundred and sixty years. One rule. She broke it.”
Protagonist: Charlotte Hardy, fictional youngest heir of the Hardy dynasty, historian by training. The real Hardy cognac house was founded by Thomas Hardy in Jarnac in 1763, making it one of the oldest cognac producers still in operation. The house has been producing continuously for over 260 years, through revolutions, wars, and every disruption the Charente has known.
Plot: In every generation, the oldest Hardy heir is told one thing: there is a first barrel in the deepest cellar, sealed by Thomas Hardy himself in 1763, marked only Ne pas ouvrir: Do not open. It has not been touched in 260 years. Charlotte Hardy is a historian. She does not believe in rules she cannot source. A gothic drama about the things we inherit that we were never meant to understand, and what happens when a family’s most careful secret outlasts the person who made it necessary.
The bottle: Hardy XO Rare Tradition. A blend of Fine Champagne eaux-de-vie aged a minimum of 15 years, produced by one of Jarnac’s oldest houses. Prune, chocolate, leather, and the deep amber colour of a cognac that has not been hurried.
Shop Hardy XO Rare Tradition →
9. One Conversation: Park XO Grande Champagne
Genre: Psychological Chamber Film | Tagline: “She said no for fifteen years. He came anyway. She called him.”
Protagonist: Lilian Friis-Holm, director of Cognac Tessendier, the family domaine behind Park Cognac, located in the Borderies appellation, the rarest and smallest of the six cognac crus. She does not give interviews. She does not attend trade shows. She makes all decisions alone and explains them to almost no one. Park cognac has a devoted cult following in Japan, where it is one of the most sought-after expressions of Borderies in existence.
Plot: For fifteen years, Danish filmmaker SĂžren Larsen has been sending interview requests to Lilian Friis-Holm. Every one declined. Then one morning she calls him. She will give him exactly one conversation, in her cellar, no cameras. He brings a tape recorder. She opens a bottle of Park XO Grande Champagne. The next two hours are the entire film, a psychological chamber piece about what happens when a person who has spent a lifetime choosing silence chooses, once, to speak.
The bottle: Park XO Grande Champagne. Borderies single cru, aged to an XO standard, with the violet and iris character unique to the Borderies appellation. Silky, understated, and consistently one of the finest Grande Champagne XO cognacs available. Sold out wherever it is stocked. Outside Japan, almost nobody knows her name. The cognac tells you everything you need to know about why.
10. Sealed: Marancheville XO Grande Champagne
Genre: Neo-Noir Heist | Tagline: “Some things age better in the dark.”
Protagonist: Camille Marancheville, the youngest daughter of the Marancheville family, producers of 100% Grande Champagne cognac from their estate in the heart of the premier cru appellation. Marancheville is a small, family-run house producing limited quantities of single-terroir cognac entirely from their own Grande Champagne vineyard.
Plot: Camille finds a contract in her grandfather’s papers, the entire undisclosed cellar reserve, three generations of Grande Champagne, promised to an anonymous buyer twenty years ago. The price has been paid. The signatures are real. Her father will not discuss it. Her uncle has disappeared. When she traces the buyer, the name does not exist. Then a stranger arrives politely at the domaine and asks very calmly to see the barrels. A neo-noir heist film about a family secret that has been aging in the dark for two decades, and the youngest daughter who decides she would rather know than not.
The bottle: Marancheville XO Grande Champagne. 100% Grande Champagne, estate-grown, aged a minimum of ten years. Honey, white peach, candied citrus, and the long chalky finish characteristic of the finest Premier Cru de Cognac terroir.
11. Occupied: Hine VSOP H by Hine
Genre: WWII Spy Thriller | Tagline: “Even in wartime. Some things must age.”
Protagonist: Thomas Hine III, the English director of Maison Hine in Jarnac during the German occupation of France, 1940 to 1944. Hine is one of the most British of the great cognac houses, founded in Jarnac in 1763 by Thomas Hine of Dorset, who married into a Cognac family and built a house that exported almost exclusively to the English establishment for two centuries. During the Second World War, Thomas Hine III was classified as an enemy national in occupied territory.
Plot: June 1940. The Germans requisition the Hine cellars in Jarnac. Thomas Hine III is English, enemy national, four hundred barrels of irreplaceable cognac, a family to protect, and a rolled letter that arrived this morning from London asking him to use the cellars for something very dangerous. He must decide by nightfall. He decides by the second glass. A spy thriller based on what actually happened in Jarnac during the occupation. Almost entirely.
The bottle: Hine VSOP H by Hine. 100% Fine Champagne (Grande and Petite Champagne blend), aged a minimum of four years. The house style: elegant, restrained, distinctly British in its composure. Fresh orchard fruit, subtle floral notes, clean and precise. The cognac Thomas Hine III would recognise.
12. Nothing Happens: Lheraud Cuvée 20 Renaissance
Genre: Art Cinema | Tagline: “Time changes everything. Or nothing at all.”
Protagonist: Guy Lheraud, patriarch and cellar master of Domaine Lheraud in Merpins, near Cognac. The Lheraud family has produced cognac in the Fins Bois and Petite Champagne appellations for generations, with Guy overseeing decades of slow, methodical, uncompromising production. The house is known for its vintage-dated cognacs going back many years, and for an approach to the craft that requires no explanation because the cognac provides its own.
Plot: After fifty years, Guy Lheraud has finally written his method down. All of it. A manuscript, not for publication, not for the house, simply to discover whether it could be put into words. His son, who returned from Bordeaux with new ideas and a lot of questions, finds the manuscript the night before Guy plans to burn it. He reads it. In the morning, neither of them mention it. But one of them plants a new vine before breakfast. The slowest, most precise, and most devastating film of the twelve.
The bottle: Lheraud CuvĂ©e 20 Renaissance. A blend aged a minimum of twenty years, drawn from the estate’s finest reserves. Honey, dried plum, roasted walnut, and an extraordinary length on the palate that justifies every year it waited in the barrel.
13. Souvenir ImpĂ©rial: Navarre Souvenir ImpĂ©rial Hors d’Age Grande Champagne
Genre: Shaolin Action Blockbuster | Tagline: “They came for the bottle. They should have stayed home.”
Protagonist: Jacky Navarre, vigneron, cellar master, and as it turns out, extraordinarily capable in a crisis. The Navarre family produces Hors d’Age Grande Champagne cognac from their estate in the Charente, with the Souvenir ImpĂ©rial as their signature expression, a bottle that has developed a devoted following and has become one of the most consistently ordered single bottles on the Cognac Expert shop.
Plot: Nobody knows how the Order of the Black Barrel found out about the Souvenir Impérial. What is known: seventeen of their most experienced operatives entered the Grande Champagne cellars to retrieve it. None came back holding the bottle. A fulminating action masterpiece about one man, one very important cognac, and absolutely no mercy for anyone who confuses a vigneron with someone who does not know how to use a barrel stave. The flat cap never moves. That is the real miracle.
The bottle: Navarre Souvenir ImpĂ©rial Hors d’Age Grande Champagne. 100% Grande Champagne, aged well beyond the legal minimum for the Hors d’Age category. Rich, complex, and unapologetically grand: candied orange peel, dark chocolate, old leather, and a finish long enough to survive seventeen rounds. The most wanted bottle on the shop for good reason. Order it before the Order does.
Shop Navarre Souvenir ImpĂ©rial →
Every story. Every bottle. All available now.
The cognac world has produced founders who crossed oceans, families divided by inheritance, obsessives who mapped every forgotten barrel in France, and at least one Norwegian who ended up making cognac in Jarnac and never quite explained why.
If you know which bottle you want, order it. If you want help choosing, write to us. We have seen every film on this list and we have opinions.
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