Inside the cognac vault: four hundred bottles, one velvet chair

The cognac cellar was an accident of architecture — a cold stone room the builders couldn’t explain and we couldn’t resist. It now holds four hundred bottles, a single leather chair and a tasting ledge barely wider than a book.

The collection leans on small grower-producers: houses that distill their own fruit, age in their own damp cellars, and bottle in runs measured in hundreds rather than thousands.

The one-chair rule

Tastings in the vault seat one guest and one sommelier — the room is genuinely that small. The ledge holds three glasses, a water pitcher and the bottle you’ve chosen. Forty minutes in the cool dark changes what a cognac tastes like; the city disappears entirely.

Cognac is the only spirit that rewards sitting still. The vault just makes stillness unavoidable.

Sofia Marchetti, Head Sommelier

The house pours by the glass upstairs too — twenty-two expressions open at any time, from bright young VS to a 1968 vintage we decant with unseemly ceremony.

How to taste with us

Book the vault through the concierge for a private session, or simply ask for the cognac card at your table. The flight of three — young, old, ancient — is the gentlest introduction we know.

Bottles may be purchased for the table or taken home; rarest releases are reserved for members’ allocation twice a year.