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We at Templeton understand just how important it is to our clients that their guests enjoy the event - where
allowed we offer the finest Cuban cigars after lunch with a good measure of cognac or port. We offer our clients consistency from one event to the next in terms of both level of service and personnel, and at least one director of the company is present at every event to ensure that our high standards are maintained.
Rémy Martin's Sprit
of Excellence
 Rémy Martin was born in 1695 and grew up working with his father, Denis, in the family vineyards near Rouillac in the Charente.
Louis XIV had been on the throne of France for more than 50 years while William of Orange ruled Holland, England (and the American colonies!).
The grapes the boy tended were already destined to be distilled into brandy called brandewijn by the Dutch and ‘burnt wine’ by the English, its two main export markets.
By 1724, married and prosperous, he was ready to expand. The House of Rémy Martin, growers and merchants, was formed. He was to be the only Cognaçais to create one of today’s ‘big four’ cognac houses. (The other three were founded by merchants and foreigners: Richard Hennessy [in 1765] from Ireland; Jean Martell [in 1715] from Jersey, while Emmanuel Courvoisier [1835] was a Parisian - just as foreign!) Rémy Martin was also the only one of the four to grow grapes.
A prudent businessman, yet imaginative, he steadily increased his vineyard holdings while putting aside increasing stocks of eaux-de-vie to age. By the time he was 64, respected, wealthy and about to retire, his son, Pierre, died. Instead of enjoying a relaxed old age, Rémy Martin continued for another 15 years until Pierre’s son, Rémy II, was old enough to take over in 1773.
Rémy II maintained his grandfather’s steady expansion and took the house through the French Revolution and the subsequent turbulent years. A wily politician, he always placed himself firmly on the winning side and his son, Rémy III, inherited a substantial business.
In 1850, it was his son, Paul-Emile, who took the next step forward - although, like the making of Cognac itself, the result was not immediately obvious. A Renaissance baroque decanter decorated with the royal fleur de lys was dug up at the site, near Jarnac, of a battle fought during the reign of Louis XIII. With sales in bottles rather than barrels increasing, Paul-Emile bought the decanter and registered reproduction rights. It was also Paul-Emile who, in 1870, dreamed up the idea of adopting a Centaur as the company logo. He registered both it and the decanter, already called ‘Louis XIII’, as trademarks in 1874. Since then, the decanters have been reserved for Rémy Martin’s oldest and most prestigious cognac. A year later he was dead at the age of 65.
At 22, Paul Rémy Martin inherited a thriving business from his father and was certainly a young man of ideas. But disaster in the shape of a tiny insect was about to strike: phylloxera. By 1880, Charente was a desolate landscape of dead vines. Growers and merchants were ruined. Paul, however, sailed serenely through the crisis, continuing to pour money into his grandiose château and entertaining lavishly. The company was still strong enough to struggle on and even, with Paul’s encouragement, establish the Rémy Martin brand in Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, the United States and Australia.
But under the surface it was paddling madly. In 1910 his bank called in a huge loan. Only an injection of capital could save the business.
André Renaud was the man who came up with the cash, becoming an associate in Emile Rémy Martin & Cie. A lawyer by training but also the son of a substantial grower, he possessed an intuitive intelligence. This told him that Rémy Martin, already known for the high quality of its cognacs, could only benefit from the protection given by the previous year’s decree defining the geographical areas that could legally produce cognac (confirmed a decade later by an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée [AOC]). Renaud remained a largely silent partner for 14 years, though he further improved the prospects of the company in 1918 when he married Marie Frapin, heir to the largest stocks of ageing eaux-de-vie in Grande Champagne. But in 1924, Paul died and André Renaud bought the widow’s share. It was the start of a new era: André Renaud would change the company out of all recognition - although, like all Cognaçais (they are not nicknamed cagouillards [snails] for nothing), he would move slowly but surely.
He was convinced that the best cognacs depended not just on how they were aged but on the soil they came from. It was the soil that gave the eaux-de-vie its aromas which ageing would then intensify. Without those original aromas, what was the point of ageing? The most complex eaux-devie came from the Grande and Petite Champagne, the central two of the six crus designated in 1909. Ergo: Rémy Martin should use only these for all its cognacs. In 1927, the first bottle of V.S.O.P (Very Superior Old Pale) appeared, blended - as it still is - 55% from Grande and 45% from Petite Champagne cognacs.
By the early 1930s, Rémy Martin V.S.O.P was making its mark in the great restaurants of Paris and in parts of east Asia. In 1936, to further enhance the prestige of Louis XIII, André Renaud appointed Baccarat Crystal to make the already famous decanter. It was cognac from one of these which the late Queen Mother, as Queen Elizabeth, enjoyed at a state banquet in Versailles in 1938. It was now obvious that the Second World War was just around the corner.
During the occupation, Cognac was lucky: their German commander had, in fact, grown up there and gone to the local lycée. He agreed that vines and stock would be valuable assets after the war. Still, the Germans took tens of millions of bottles: two years’ sales in four months in 1940 it is said. But the cognac companies survived and Rémy Martin welcomed the man who would really put them on the world map.
André Hériard Dubreuil, son of a cognac merchant, married André Renaud’s elder daughter, Anne-Marie, in 1942. Like his father-in-law, he was a visionary but would move slowly in promoting his own revolution. Together, they made the crucial decision to concentrate their postwar export efforts on V.S.O.P, then representing a tiny percentage of the market. It would cost more than their rivals’ but its quality and taste would set it apart in what both men foresaw as becoming a more prestige-conscious market. Within two years, sales had soared to 60,000 cases and further success was swift. By 1965, when André Renaud died and André Hériard Dubreuil
became Chairman.
Rémy Martin cognacs had a worldwide reputation for quality and were selling over 300,000 cases a year. It didn’t take long for Mr. Hériard Dubreuil to make his mark. Foreseeing that sales of cognac could soon outstrip supplies, he recognised that, if the cognac houses continued to arbitrarily set the prices of eaux-de-vie as low as possible (as they had for decades), there would be no incentive for any vigneron to plant more vines. He also wanted to ensure consistency of quality and taste in Rémy Martin’s cognacs for the future.
The solution he devised - long-term contracts between Rémy Martin and the growers with strict quality controls built in and fair prices set several years in advance - caused uproar in the industry. Merchants, of course, were aghast at any loss of power and even vignerons had to be persuaded that they would remain independent. Today, this is the normal way of doing business for all the major Cognac houses. Rémy Martin itself is in partnership with 1800 growers. In 1972, V.S.O.P’s new frosted bottle stunned the world, achieving almost cult status in the United States and the Far East especially among the under-35-year-olds.
Exports more than quadrupled between 1974 and 1982. Rémy Martin V.S.O.P is still the leader in its field and acknowledged as the standard against which all others are judged. But there was an obvious gap in the market between V.S.O.P, blended from 240 cognacs between four and 12 years of age, and Louis XIII, a blend of 1,200 cognacs between 40 and 100 years old. At the same time, there was a growing demand for older cognacs. To meet it, Rémy Martin created two more cognacs - each different from the other and their existing brothers but sharing the same Fine Champagne structure. So, while V.S.O.P contains just over half Grande Champagne cognacs, the eight to 20 year-old X.O.
Excellence blend would contain two-thirds Grande Champagne and the 35-50 year-old Extra 90%. Louis XIII, of course, is 100% Grande Champagne. The company is now in the hands of Dominique Hériard Dubreuil, one of the few women to head a major French company, and the daughter of André Hériard Dubreuil who retired 20 years ago. Since then, Rémy Martin has continued to expand, buying other companies, diversifying and creating today’s Rémy Cointreau Group. Like her father, Mme Hériard Dubreuil is creating her own revolution - slowly but surely.
Rémy.com made its début on the world wide web in 1995 and a major innovation, Only Rémy Dinners, which pair cognacs with dishes throughout menus devised by leading chefs, was launched in 1999. The year 2000 saw the introduction of Rémy Red, the first of a new generation of cognac based drinks. Rémy Space, a limited edition of cognac packaged to withstand the rigours of tomorrow’s (now today’s!) space tourists, was launched in 2001. As always, the commitment is to quality and the pursuit of excellence. It is this, together with a refusal to settle for anything less than the best, which creates the complex pleasures of Rémy Martin. Or, as Mme Hériard Dubreuil says, ‘taste is at the heart of everything we do.’
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