Ten generations of Ferrands, and a business student who arrived in 1989.

The cognac long sold as Pierre Ferrand, and today labelled simply Ferrand, comes from Grande Champagne, the first growth of the Cognac region, around the town of Segonzac in Charente. The house says all of its cognacs are made from Grande Champagne grapes. French Wikipedia says the Ferrand family has been established in the Cognac region since at least 1469 and became vineyard owners at the start of the seventeenth century, trading in wine and spirits. The company itself dates its family story to 1630 and the birth in Segonzac of the first of ten generations of men named Elie Ferrand.

Those ten generations sit at the centre of the brand. The company says Elie Ferrand VIII was the family’s best-known member and that his cognac won a gold medal at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris; French Wikipedia, citing the spirits site Spirits Hunters in March 2019, also records the 1900 gold medal. The company says the family archives passed to Henriette Ranson-Ferrand, Elie VIII’s great-granddaughter and the last of the line, who entrusted the family heritage to Maison Ferrand. The family manor at Segonzac, built in 1861 and known as the Manoir de Mademoiselle, now houses the company’s foundation for the history of cognac and rum, French Wikipedia says.

The modern business began in 1989. French Wikipedia, citing Forbes, says Alexandre Gabriel and Jean-Dominique Andreu came across cognac made by Pierre Ferrand at a distillery at La Nérolle, in Segonzac, went into partnership and created the Cognac Ferrand brand. The Spirits Business, in a September 2019 brand history, says Gabriel was 23 when he was offered a share in the house and that he had bought it within two years. The company says Gabriel, who grew up in southern Burgundy, has been its master blender since 1989.

A three-star cognac for bartenders, and a curaçao beside it.

The Spirits Business says the brand launched in the United States in 1991, and its best-known American release is the 1840 Original Formula. Thirsty in LA reported in July 2011 that Gabriel and cellar master Christian Guerin created it with the spirits historian David Wondrich, after tasting surviving three-star cognacs of the early nineteenth century; the final blend was modelled on a well-preserved 1840 bottle of Pinet-Castillon cognac. It was the house’s first cognac designed for cocktails. Its first official pour came on 22 July 2011 at the Hotel Monteleone during Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, and it went on sale across the United States on 1 August 2011, the same report said.

The current range, as listed by the house, runs from the 1840 Original Formula and Ambré — which the company says uses Colombard alongside the main grape, Ugni Blanc — to 10 Générations and Sélection des Anges, with experimental Renegade releases. The company says its wines are double-distilled in copper alambics charentais heated over an open flame, then aged in a mix of dry and humid cellars. French Wikipedia says the cognac is distilled at Angeac. In 2019 The Spirits Business put the vineyard at about 200 hectares, 80 of them owned outright, all in Grande Champagne.

Alongside the cognacs, Maison Ferrand makes Dry Curaçao, an orange liqueur, which French Wikipedia lists among the company’s products and the house sells under the Ferrand name. In 2022, French Wikipedia says, citing Le Parisien, the company put into service Barge 166, a barge moored on the Seine at Issy-les-Moulineaux that it uses as a floating ageing cellar for rums and cognacs.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all cognac and Armagnac names: Pierre Ferrand, Frapin, Darroze, Château de Laubade, Larressingle, Janneau and Tariquet. Cognac and Armagnac houses in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family estates that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a restaurant list.

A cognac or Armagnac brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its brandy is actually distilled, aged and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its brandy is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From one cognac to an independent spirits house.

The company that owns the cognac is Maison Ferrand, founded in 1989 and based at Ars in Charente, where French Wikipedia describes it as an independent French spirits company led by its owner, Alexandre Gabriel, as chairman and chief executive. Its ownership settled in two steps. French Wikipedia, citing Le Parisien in November 2000, says Pierre Ferrand lost a court case over the rights to the Ferrand mark in April 2000 and left the company’s capital. It adds, citing TheDrinksReport and The Spirits Business, that Jean-Dominique Andreu sold his stake and left the company in February 2008.

Maison Ferrand grew well beyond cognac. In 1996 it put its idle cognac stills to work on Citadelle, a French gin, The New York Times reported in December 1998, and later planted its own juniper. In 1999 it launched Plantation rum, aged first in its country of origin and again in cognac casks in France, French Wikipedia says. In 2017 it bought the West Indies Rum Distillery in Barbados and, French Wikipedia says, a 33 percent stake in National Rums of Jamaica. French Wikipedia, citing Le Monde, says a new distillery at Ars dedicated to Citadelle opened in 2021; it names the Château de Bonbonnet at Ars as the gin’s home. In January 2024 Plantation became Planteray, a change first pledged in 2020, Drinks International reported, and in July 2024 Maison Ferrand bought its UK distributor, Identity Drinks, The Spirits Business reported.

For a design guide, Pierre Ferrand shows how a family name with ten generations behind it can carry a cognac while the company around it adds gin and rum. Compare Planteray, Maison Ferrand’s Barbados rum, and Frapin, another Segonzac house in Grande Champagne. For this guide we use amber, cask brown and chalk cream with a Didone serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Pierre Ferrand’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.