Vodka (750 ml)

When Cognac Maître de Chai François Thibault was handed the brief in 1997, he refused the industry shortcut of purchasing ready-made neutral grain spirit and redistilling it — insisting instead on full grain-to-glass control, a philosophy borrowed directly from Cognac's terroir-first tradition. That decision defines every bottle. 100% blé panifiable supérieur soft winter wheat, sourced exclusively from three family-farm cooperatives on the chalk plains of Picardy, is sown in October and harvested ten months later — a growing cycle nearly double that of summer wheat, producing denser starch and more expressive cereal character. Milled on-site at Saint-Quentin, the grain is fermented continuously across six cascading tanks to a ~10% ABV wash before a single five-column distillation to 96% ABV — enough rectification to clean, not enough to erase. The high-proof spirit travels 600 km south to Gensac-la-Pallue in the Cognac region, where it is blended with water drawn from a proprietary artesian well 150 m below Champagne limestone (pH reduced from 7.5 to ~5 via double reverse osmosis) and passed once through a light cellulose-and-active-carbon polish — no heavy chill-filtration, no additives, no sugar. The special feature: Grey Goose is the category's deliberate transgressor — where Eastern European orthodoxy demands odourless neutrality, Thibault's single-distillation preserves cracked wheat, faint anise, and mineral freshness that multiple redistillations would destroy. Bottled at 40% ABV, sealed with a replaceable cork, and released only after over 550 quality checks per batch.