The name for the spirit we know as brandy comes from the Dutch word brandewijn, which literally means “burnt wine,” since brandy is boiled down or distilled from wine. Cognac is the “Cadillac” of brandies and the standard by which others are often measured, followed by Armagnac, which is the oldest type of brandy in France, dating back to the early 15th century. In the early 1900s, France enacted laws to mandate that the finest of French brandies be called Cognac, and there are strict laws regulating its production from the type of grapes used to the wood barrels for aging the spirit.
