A friend just gave me this bottle, which his dad brought back from France after WW II. His dad seemed to think it was cognac.
It’s got some amber color now, in a light green, almost clear bottle. Any clues?
I would guess maybe it is Swiss? From what is now called Collex-Bossy? Bossy and Collex are two villages that formed a municipality in the Canton of Geneva . If it is wine mostly likely gamay as that is the most planted grape variety in the region
Thanks, that seems plausible.
Also possible that it IS cognac, since ‘fine’ is an old word/synonym for cognac. As in ‘une fine a l’eau’ when you order a vs cognac with soda or water as a long drink. In 1918 there weren’t any aoc regulations for anything, including nomenclature.
Armagnac?
The plot thickens.
The liquid in the bottle looks thin. I’m not a Cognac expert by any means, but my expectation would be to see more viscosity there than for a wine. I could be dead wrong there.
FWIW, the cork is intact with no seepage. The bottom of the cork is visibly saturated. It’s a short cork, about an inch in length.
& I just noticed, etched on the bottle itself, this at the base: “07_-CB2”
A brandy would not be more visous. It’s a distillate. Think vodka. Hazarding a guess - maybe it’s a brandy from Bossy (although I’d expect it to say “Fine de Bossy” - “fine” does represent brandy)). I don’t suspect it is a Cognac, since that would be a name worth trading on, but it’s not on the label. Maybe it’s named after my wife - fine AND bossy
eau de vie of some sort is my guess
marc, Cognac, Armagnac…
If it’s anything like a Fine de Bourgogne, then it’s a brandy made from the distillation of wine lees, the bottom 2 to 4 gallons of sediment at the bottom of a standard barrel. Since Collex-Bossy in Switzerland isn’t too far from Burgundy, this is a possibility. I went to the Collex-Bossy website, but didn’t see much on there. Who knows, there may have been a Burgundian producer named Bossy in 1918, but I couldn’t find anything about that online.
I’ve had some guesses on the CT forum that it could be absinthe, so I’m looking down that rabbit hole, too.
I doubt it’s absinthe, although anythiung is possible
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_(brandy)
By the way, nice friend