Cognac (brandy)

(CC) Photo: Andreas Nilsson
Various brands of Cognac.

Cognac is an alcoholic beverage that is often known as brandy in non-French speaking countries. This is because of laws that require the names of certain alcoholic products (for example, Champagne) to be used only when that product is actually produced within a specific, and legally defined, region. True Cognac, as distinct from other types of French brandy, can only be labelled as such if it comes from a small area of western France surrounding a town called Cognac.

Cognac, which is also sometimes called eau de vie, a French term meaning "water of life", is made from a distillation of wine.

See also

• Calvados—distilled cider