Cognac/Grape Brandy

[hawkwing]

I’m considering trying to make Cognac or something similar. At the very least brandy.

I’m considering using purchased lugs of grapes. I’m unsure maybe someone knows, are lugs of grapes sulfited or gased with sulfur dioxide or something like that? Is this a problem? Can it be rinsed off? Does it need to be? I can get French Colombard which I would probably prefer over my other choices of Muscat and Thompson Seedless. I’d probably need 30 lugs to fill a 30L barrel and have some extra but not much.

What about using juice buckets that are sulfited? These would be much less work and would give access to more kinds of grape varieties like Tempranillo. I’d probably need 12-15 pails of juice. Or a mix of juice and grapes. That said I don’t know how critical the grapes are as long as they are acidic and end dry. They seem to have historically changed the grape varieties used based on several factors including disease resistance and availability.

I think they press then ferment to avoid the tannins. Is this correct? Am I correct to not ferment and distill on the skins and pulp. Also definitely not the stems?

What yeast is best for grape fermentation when distilling? Any make better esters or just use regular wine yeasts or even natural yeasts on the grapes?

Apparently a MLF or Malolactic fermentation is also desirable. I’ve done this for wine before.

I was going to do a double pot distillation. I can’t remember for certain but I think the fruit flavors are more into the heads. So will be interesting to see how the cuts go vs whiskey and rum.

Then I was planning to get a 30L French oak barrel. Smallest I can find and dint want to be too small. I realize they use Much larger than even whiskey barrels in France. Reading about the aging process they tend to not use new oak for long. They seem to start around 65-70% ABV then they dilute and move to used barrels a couple times. I was hoping to maybe age for upwards of 10 years.

Not sure if I missed anything or not. Any experience would be appreciated. I don’t want to spend a bunch of money, time, and effort if the sulfites will be an issue or if I’ll over oak and not be happy. Using buckets of juice would be nice and convenient but not worth it if the sulfites are an issue.

Thanks for any and all help. I need to make up my mind pretty fast to make an order for September delivery.