Paradis Found

Speaking to Patrick Madendjian, Managing Director for Moët Hennessy Diageo Singapore and Malaysia, Augustman discovers what makes Hennessy Paradis an exceptional spirit for exceptional individuals and iconoclasts

- JONATHAN HO

Cognac is a fast-growing category; some say it's because of the whisky scarcity problem. What does it mean for the global market and for Singapore and Malaysia?

I think you need to look at this question in reverse. It was actually cognac that was having a massive scarcity problem or more accurately, we had a demand higher than our capacity to produce because we historically have never produced more cognac than we do today.

In terms of scotch whisky, some brands have scarcity; but as a category, there's still lots of availability globally. The reason why Cognac is limited in its production is because of the French appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) designation, with production standards including only producing it in the region, to meet certain legal requirements. That means by law, there's a limited surface on which you can plant your vines and planting more needs approval from the French government and that can take a lot of time. Furthermore, you lose a big portion of your production to the "angel's share" (Ed's note: evaporation).

So when you put all of this together as a category, there's only so much you can produce [in] a single year and you also have to factor in harvest yields, which means that you need to maximise every single drop of cognac that you can produce.

That said, everything is cyclical: There's global economic tension today; inflation is playing its role as well; and markets are starting to slow down, which means that we can bring the equation back to balance.

Do you think you're about to face a problem where customers are treating a premium spirit like Hennessy Paradis as a commodity and then it goes into a safe for "value appreciation" and it never gets experienced by the consumers who really want to drink it?