Cooking World

The Frenchmen are sure that they have thought up cognac, Englishmen argue with them. Though historical evidence point out at Dutch or even at the medieval Arabian merchants.
To remove superfluous water
In the XVI century French authorities have introduced wine export duty which has forced the French traders to export wine as a strong solution, though even earlier Dutch began to evaporate “superfluous” water.
That very method of evaporation or distillation has been borrowed from unknown Arabian merchants. Having delivered the goods to their destinations, Dutch diluted the “concentrated” wine with water and sold to secondhand dealers.
Englishmen were the first to begin drink brandy in the pure, undiluted kind. So this is the story of appearance of this divine drink.

As it is known, cognac is the drink which has been produced on its historical native land. It turns out, that all Russian, Georgian, Moldavian and Armenian cognacs have no right to wear this famous name. Everything else is brandy. But there is an interesting fact: there is the curious historical document signed by members of the World Parisian exhibition professional jury in 1900, which allows to call a drink of the Russian manufacture as cognac. In fact, this sanction concerns only the Armenian cognac manufactured by Nikolay Shustov. It was sent to that exhibition anonymously, without the indication of the manufacturer, and won Grand prix, having overtaken the true French cognacs.