Cognac is wine made into very good spirit. But it’s not drinking wine – the source wine needs to be acid to make the chemical reactions work. It distills in old-fashioned copper stills over a long time (100 years, in fact) in Limousin oak casks. The wood imparts not only colour but a chemical magic that results in the exquisite liquid.
Figuring out which newly distilled eaux de vie are going to get better with age and earn their place in the special cellar is the tricky part.
‘Nature and time are at the heart of what we do – each decanter of Louis XIII represents the life achievement of generations of cellar masters, so we must always think a century ahead,’ says Ludovic du Plessis, global executive director of Louis XIII. ‘If the environment is unstable, even the greatest cellar masters would not be able to compose the exceptional Louis XIII blend. This project [with Pharrell Williams] is an exciting creative exploration of the way our actions today shape the world of tomorrow.’
Williams’s exclusive track is engraved on a record made from the chalky soil of Grande Champagne cru within Cognac, and stored in the Louis XIII cellars in a state-of-the-art safe designed by Fichet-Bauche that is only destructible when submerged in water.
If sea levels continue to rise at such an alarming rate due to climate change, scientists project that in 100 years a significant portion of the earth’s surface may be underwater. The only way to guarantee this original music will be heard again a century from now is to address the consequences of global warming. ‘100 Years’ by Pharrell Williams will be out in 2117 – but only, says the campaign, #Ifwecare.
