1946 The Stock Club Bar Book by Lucius Beebe

unacco~tahly face down on the stair landing and enquiring of kind friends who it might have been that has so rudely fallen. Only research and a considerable investment of time and patience can fairly determine an individual taste in Cognacs and the experts will dispute the matter until Judgment Day. Its frequently low alco– holic content should never he taken as an index of its chemical and toxic strength and some of the most perilous of all Fines of great age may he iio more than thirty-six or forty percent alcohol. Personally the taste of the author runs to a Cognac or Fine Cham– pagne approximately forty years old, an age when the brands and blends of alj accredited houses are possessed of common and often indistinguishable qualities of even mellowness with;ut too great a strain on their essential strength and vitality. In ~ommon practice the stars onCognac should indicate approximately three years of age. The initials by which Cognacs are classified vary with different firms of export hut, again, generally speaking, they may he inter– ' preted as follows:

E: Especial F: Fine V: Very 0: Old S: Superior P: Pale X: Extra C: Cognac

Thus it will be seen that a VSOP is, within the honor of the dis– tiller and his established reputation for an honest description of his product, a Very Superior Old Pale Cognac, hut none of these adjectives.has any formal definition or meaning beyond the discre-

94: Stork Club Bar Book