Back to Cognac

This film tells the story of a great divide between what is a very French rural product, cognac, barely consumed in France, and its transatlantic success in the United States, in particular in the world of hip-hop. It’s a historical love story between Americans and cognac.

Running time: 52 mins
Release: 2019

Back to Cognac film synopsis:
The story is told by wine-producers, distillers, heads of cognac companies, cocktail and spirits historians, cellar masters, both French and American. The film goes back and forth between two different worlds, two mind sets. It tries to find the bridges between the two and explain the connections. The contrast in representation depending on the country is therefore immeasurable. In France, cognac brings to mind your old grandfather nodding off after dinner, whereas in the United States cognac takes you dancing until dawn in nightclubs.
Between Cognac and New-York, between old and young, between rural and ostentatious, between craftsmanship and counter-culture… cognac begins its journey in our French countryside and ends it in the glasses of hipsters, of Afro-Americans, of the American elite. If the market has been particularly successful over the past twenty years or so, its story actually goes back as far as the 18th century with the very first exports, and crosses paths with two World Wars, and even Prohibition.

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Director: Mathilde Fassin

Learn more about Cognac by watching The Three Drinkers in Cognac