X.O. Jean-Michel (Limited Edition) (700 ml)

Maurice Hennessy created the XO category in 1870 as a private blend for family and friends — a gesture that accidentally defined a global cognac tier still in use today. This limited edition pairs that founding expression with the visual language of Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose raw, confrontational mark-making mirrors the house's own deliberate rule-breaking in the cellar. Sourced from over 1,500 partner growers across Grande Champagne's shallow clay-limestone chalk, the clay-flint soils of Borderies, Petite Champagne, and Fins Bois, each cru contributes distinct structural material: Grande Champagne's chalky subsoil drives the long-aging potential; Borderies' clay-flint adds a characteristic roundness. Double-distilled in Charentais copper pot stills with both lees-on and lees-off batches, and uniquely, heads and tails are reintroduced to the brouillis before the second pass — concentrating congeners for a darker, denser spirit than most Cognac houses permit. The blend draws on 100+ eaux-de-vie aged up to approximately 30 years in hand-cooperaged Limousin oak, rotated across 65 chais, including humid riverside cellars that yield rounder, mellower spirit. What no peer does: Hennessy operates its own Limousin forest holdings — trees felled only after 80+ years — and an in-house cooperage producing 400–500 barrels annually by hand, giving the eighth-generation Fillioux blending lineage direct control over oak influence from forest to chai.