I have a friend named Charles Neal who imports French wine and spirits. We’ll get into the history of how that began later, but let’s just say that many years ago Charles fell in love with a girl from Armagnac, moved to Southern France, and had to find a way to keep himself busy.

I met Charles in 2009 and started purchasing a number of his goods for the store I was running. As we expanded the portfolio and spirits started taking off, I suggested to Charles: maybe we should go to France and find more stuff. And so we did. From 2012 to 2018, Charles and I went to Armagnac, Cognac, and Calvados annually (sometimes bi-annually) to taste new brandies and select exclusive vintages for my store.

How does one do that? It’s pretty simple. Look at the above photo. You rent a car, drive around from farm to farm, tell the producer you’re interested in purchasing some booze, and then you taste. He or she will walk you into the barrel room or chai (pronounced “shay”), pull some samples out of the giant foudres, and you go from there.

As the years went by and our supplemental import program expanded, Charles began offering the same opportunities to other bars and restaurants in California. The cocktail world was exploding and there were a number of adventurous drink menus in search of unadulterated and affordable brandies for their thirty consumers.

But, as you can imagine, with bars and restaurants being closed for the last year, much of those exclusive blends have gone unused and a pressure release valve for that inventory is needed. While retailers have gobbled up the older and more expensive brandies that Charles imports, the cocktail-oriented bottles are without an audience because there’s no one around to explain what’s in them!

But I’m going to remedy that this week. Having been there for a number of these blending sessions firsthand, I’m going to share photos and write-ups on three of Charles’ core producers, as well as purchase them for the store.

If you’re champing at the bit to get going, you don’t have to wait for me. I’ve got a number of new Pellehaut expressions ready to go, including the new Selection II meant for making high-quality Sidecars and Brandy Old Fashioneds. I haven’t updated the notes yet, however; and I have some more editing work to do on the text that’s already there.

I’ll also have affordable new Calvados arrivals from Domaine du Manor de Montreuil and a fantastic Cognac selection from Dugognon, one of the last producers in the region to bottle without one drop of added caramel coloring or sweetener.

And I plan to get Charles on here for an interview as well, hopefully an Instagram Live chat next week. Stay tuned.

-David Driscoll