Your favorite Brandy and/or Cognac

[nortac]

As suggested from a previous attempt to learn more about Brandy and Cognacs, what's your favorite?

 

[The Count of Merkur Cristo]

Nortac:
My favorite is Hine VSOP!

"All Cognac’s are Brandy...but not all Brandy’s are Cognac". CBJ

 

[merovirginian]

My "everyday" favorites (the ones in my living room) are Remy Martin VSOP and Hennessy VS (it has a very subtle chocolate flavor in there). My wife once gave me an advent calendar with a different sample of cognac for each of 24 days. She gets me. None of those samples saw February.

 

[The Knize]

Kelt cognac XO may be my favorite cognac ever, but it is about $170 for 750 ml, so not an everyday drink. I really like Kelt VSOP. It is about $80 a bottle so closer to everyday, but quite there.

Kirkland (Costco) XO is about $50, and more like an everyday cognac. I would use it to make sidecars and the like, as well as sipping it straight.

On the apple brandy/Calvados front, I think Laird's 100 proof bottled-in-bond, is wonderful, and around $32 where I am. I am not impressed with other Laird expressions.

I do not think any real Calvados I have tried has been bad, but I have not tried that many. The least expensive Daron, a Pays d'Age Calvados, seems wonderful. Very applely. About $40, I think.

The Copper & Kings apple and grape American brandys seem okay, but not great, as much as I wanted them to be.

 

[Champion of Capua]

For the money: Hennessy Privilege (VSOP) & Remy Martin 1738. Don’t forget Armagnac, I have a couple Delords 25 & 30 yo’s that are outstanding for the $$.