Jinyun, a small county town in southern Zhejiang, has a warm climate, stretches mountains, and is often compared to a fairyland by people in the mist. There is a Dufeng Academy in the mountains, where Zhu Xi, a scholar from the Northern Song Dynasty, once lectured.
There is also a special product called "tuff" in Jinyun Mountain, since the Song Dynasty, this volcaniclastic rock has been mined into strip stones, used to build houses, pave roads, build bridges, etc., until the eighties of the last century, the quarrying industry was replaced by tourism.
Jinyun Xiandu. Today, there are more than 3,000 quarrying sites in Jinyun County, known as "Stone Temple", in 2001, the local ** selected 9 from them, and invited the top domestic architects to carry out the transformation, respecting the original appearance and integrating the humanities and artistic connotations.
In January of this year, the French cognac brand Rémy Martin celebrated its 300th birthday in this extraordinary world, and guests experienced a magical night in the whispers of the mountain gods.
Walking into the mountain at dusk, you will walk up the gray-white tuff steps to a narrow entrance shaded by mountain trees, facing the huge stone wall with the words "Remy Martin 300" cast by amber lights.
Rémy Martin celebrates its 300th anniversary at Jinyun Stone Temple.
This is the No. 8 stone mound, known as the "study", and the lights and shadows in the cave are longing and igniting curiosity. Continue to move forward, suddenly enlightened, the whole stone temple is like a pot-bellied antique vase, the guests in the "bottle" look up is a small piece of blue sky, the sky is getting dark, white clouds drift by from time to time.
The bottle body is "open, the length, width and height are forty or fifty meters, and the inner wall is the traces of thousands of years of knife carving and axe chisel, and the folk craftsmen of the past generations have shown the perseverance of Yugong to move mountains. A zigzag-shaped staircase connects several original quarrying platforms, on which are equipped with bookshelves and railings made of bamboo nanmu.
No. 8 Stone Shrine, the tasting site of the 300th anniversary edition of the Rémy Martin Grand Champagne Cognac Celebration.
In this flat and rugged space, the art installation "The Momentum of Life" by Rémy Martin and artist Tan Zhipeng is displayed. This golden metal work is like two liquids colliding and blending, showing a strong vitality.
The Rémy Martin Champagne Cognac Celebration 300th Edition is encased at the intersection of "liquids", which is like a two-handed support, and also contains an interpretation of the process of the birth of cognac.
Tam Chi Pang's artwork for the 300th edition of Rémy Martin Champagne Cognac.
From watches to fashion, from jewelry to wine, more and more brands are beginning to cooperate with artists, either to create new products by artistic means, or to support artistic activities, and the artistic and collectible value of luxury goods is becoming more and more distinct.
The No. 9 Stone Shrine, where food, wine, flowers and beautiful people spent a brilliant night in the ancient and rough Stone Shrine, with a gilded red body and rich aromas of passion fruit and flowers, and the wine bloomed on the tip of the tongue with a variety of flavors such as candied fruits and oak, with a long aftertaste.
Baptiste Loiseau, the fifth-generation Master Distiller of Rémy Martin, said on the scene: "It is wonderful to celebrate its 300th anniversary in such a special place. The volcanic tuff in the marble mould and the chalky soil in the concept of cognac's "terroir" are another subtle and subtle echo.
Baptiste Loisau, the fifth-generation chief brewmaster of Rémy Martin, at the event.
Grand Champagne "Solo".
In 1724, Rémy Martin, a vineyard owner born in Cognac, founded his own wine company, marking the birth of the Rémy Martin brand, which will mark its 300th anniversary in 2024.
The 300th anniversary of the Rémy Martin Champagne Cognac Celebration is a celebration of the brand's 300th anniversary, a new chapter in its fourth centenary. Cognac in the bottle, naturally extraordinary.
Rémy Martin Grand Champagne Cognac Celebration 300th Anniversary Edition.
As we know, cognac was originally a small town in the south of France, which became an exclusive name for the production of high-quality cognac, as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, France ** was clearly stipulated in the "French Nomenclature of Origin", and has been famous all over the world for more than 100 years.
The Cognac region is divided into six different sub-regions: Grande Champagne and Petite Champagne in the center, then the surrounding margins, the Haute Woods, the Eulins and the Flat Forest, with the vineyards at its core gradually spreading outwards to form an irregular circle.
Six sub-appellations of the Cognac region.
The excellent qualities of cognac are attributed to the "terroir", a very complex, somewhat metaphysical but actually scientific concept, including grape varieties, soil composition, rainfall, sunshine levels, wind direction, temperature distribution, flora and so on.
Taken together, they determine the characteristics of the grapes, the specific effects of each stage of winemaking, such as saccharification, fermentation, distillation and cellaring, and ultimately the characteristics of the cognacs of different regions.
The "terroir" of the Cognac region
Traditionally believed that the Grande and Petite Champagne terroirs are the best, producing "eaux-de-vie" with greater quality and ageing potential, and since its creation, Rémy Martin has been making only grapes from Grande and Petite Champagne as raw materials.
However, this edition of the 300th anniversary of the Rémy Martin Grand Champagne Cognac celebration only uses the "eaux-de-vie" of Grande Champagne as the base wine, which is a new level of rarity, and it is also very suitable for collection.
The 300th edition of the bottle also has a story, paying homage to the 250th anniversary of the brand in 1974, with the golden centaur logo and the brand name in the center, the number 300 representing the anniversary year and the text of origin; The upper and lower parts of the bottle are designed with an oblique pattern, which is consistent with the direction of the people holding javelins; There are also separate limited edition numbers at the bottleneck.
Detail of the bottle of the 300th anniversary of the Rémy Martin Champagne Cognac Celebration.
The familiar image of the half-man and half-horse holding a javelin is a symbol of status and taste in the world of spirits. This image first appeared in 1870, when Paul Émile, the heir of the brand's *** family, designed the symbol that would later become famous all over the world with his own constellation, Sagittarius.
Sagittarius, also known as Sagittarius, is not the same as the "bow and arrow" shooter in pop culture, but it is not contradictory.
The constellation originated from ancient Greek mythology, the prototype character of Sagittarius is called Charon, both civil and military, proficient in the six arts, dancing guns and sticks, pulling bows and riding and shooting, he is the teacher of all heroes in mythological stories, Hercules, Asclepius, the god of medicine, Orpheus and others, who are good at **, are all art learned from Charon.
The Education of Achilles, Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Italy.
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Rémy Martin logo is inspired by the constellation Sagittarius.
After the frank, benevolent, well-cultivated, and affectionate Caron ** became a Sagittarius, his personal good qualities became the good qualities of this zodiac sign. Paul-Emile's use of the image of a man with a javelin as his logo also hints at the extraordinary quality and charm of each bottle of Rémy Martin cognac.
A 300-year-old legend worth collecting.
The unique "terroir" of Grande Champagne gives the Rémy Martin Grande Champagne Tricentennial Edition an incomparable tasting and collectible value, and in addition to the terroir, there are many different things about this wine that make it even more collectible.
First of all, the Tricentennial Edition contains an exclusive concept of Rémy Martin: "Perpetual Cellar", in which each Master Cellar Master will inherit an anniversary edition created by his predecessors and use it for his or her own creations of the present era, or carefully pass it on to the next generation for future editions.
Baptiste Loisau drew on the essence of the 290th Anniversary Edition to create the Tricentennial Edition, which in turn had the style of the 275th Anniversary Edition; The Tricentennial Edition will also be partially stored in the cellar for future anniversaries.
Pierrette Trichet, Master Distiller of the Rémy Martin brand***
With Baptiste Loiseau, the fifth generation of Rémy Martin's Chief Cellar Master.
"Sustainable Cellaring", which shows the continuous inheritance of the essence of the Rémy Martin brand from generation to generation of brewmasters. The "secret recipe" passed down from master brewer to brewer is the foundation of the exclusive flavor of the Rémy Martin brand, and it is another important reason why this 300-year-old wine is worth collecting.
Jean Monnet, the French politician known as the "father of the European Union", was the son of a wine merchant in Cognac, and his childhood memories are written in the book "Cognac": he said that in Cognac at that time, every wine merchant family would use curtains to cover the doors and windows at night to prevent others from seeing their blending process. Each cognac house has its own recipe and cherishes it as a great secret.
The traditional family "secret" is what we today call "the way of experience" and "the inheritance of know-how", and cognac is often blended from several, dozens, or even hundreds of "eaux-de-vie", which are taught only by word of mouth from generation to generation of cellar masters.
Cognac is blended using dozens, if not hundreds, of "eaux-de-vie".
Another differentiator is the scarcity, with the Tricentennial Edition limited to 6,724 bottles worldwide, each one of which is a rarity. Imagine that according to the statistics of the French Cognac Association (BNIC), the town of Cognac produces more than 200 million bottles of cognac every year, and Rémy Martin accounts for only a small fraction of them, and the Tricentennial Edition is less than 1 in 10,000.
Brand value is also an important consideration element for collections. In the "2023 Global Spirits Top 50" list released by Brand Finance, a well-known brand evaluation agency, Rémy Martin ranked 17th, ranking first in the cognac category. Needless to say, Rémy Martin is highly recognized and valued around the world.
The collection should also consider the emotional connection, and the emotional story between Rémy Martin and the Chinese people has a long history. In the 30s of the last century, Shanghai was already an international metropolis, known as the "Paris of the East", and cognac was already the mainstream "foreign wine" in Shanghai at that time.
Later, Shanghai businessmen went to Hong Kong, and the drinking habits were brought to Xiangjiang, and over the past hundred years, cognac has had a more far-reaching influence in South Chinao Name a sauce to show its nobility and preciousness.
x.o refers to the youngest "eaux-de-vie" in cognac, aged for at least 10 years.
The standard before 2018 was at least 6 years).
I once interviewed a Hong Kong lady who came to the mainland in the 1990s to do foreign wine business, and she said that around 2000, mainland consumers had begun to buy foreign wine priced at tens of thousands of yuan.
Chen Yan, winner of the Mao Dun Literature Award and a famous writer in Shaanxi, also described the life of luxury goods entering "Xijing" after the reform and opening up in his long story "The Protagonist", and Rolex watches and foreign wine played an important role in promoting the development of the storyline.
Today, Cognac is the second largest spirit in the consumer market in Chinese mainland after liquor, and Remy Martin is recognized as one of the well-known cognac brands in China, which can be said to be the initiator of Chinese cognac consumption.
The Rémy Martin logo and wine bottle are the most familiar to Chinese.
The emotional connection with the Chinese is strong.
Collectible market with cognac.
As people get richer and more tasteful, collecting becomes a part of life. Since the 1980s, wealthy Chinese people have been discerning in search of collectible objects: Ming and Qing dynasty furniture, antique porcelain, landscape calligraphy and painting, Western oil paintings, watches, jewelry, and wine.
An American writer named William Peck, who wrote a book about the hounding collectors of Americans in the early twentieth century, described the American collectors of his time as "a group of people who indulged in those unique professions, like 'magpies,' who were somewhat prejudiced in their selection of anything that caught their eye."
Psychologist Maslow divided human needs, aesthetic needs and self-realization needs are at the top of the pyramid, people look for beauty, appreciate beauty, master the balance and form of beauty, establish the ability to appreciate and judge beauty, and obtain the satisfaction of realizing self-worth. Collecting is a way for human beings to realize their aesthetics and self.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow.
The act of collecting has a long history, and it can be counted from the collection of beautiful seashells by the ancients. But the real market for collecting, like today's, only emerged after the Industrial Revolution. Technological progress has contributed to the growth of the wealthy, and more and more people have wealth and become the middle and upper classes of the olive-shaped society, who not only buy antiques from the old aristocracy, but also support the creation of contemporaries.
After the middle of the nineteenth century, art became a means of investment, and the economic value of paintings, antiques, and sculptures became more and more significant. After World War II, the art market spread from Europe to the world with economic globalization, and auction houses originating from the United Kingdom opened branches in New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai, which was both the result and the driving force of the globalization of art investment.
The Asian headquarters of Phillips, an international auction house based in Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District.
Since the end of the twentieth century, after traditional art, luxury goods have gradually taken over as the object of collection of wealthy people, including jewelry, watches, wine, leather goods and sneakers, etc., this field has become more and more refined and professional. Spirits are the darling of today's collector's market, as you can see from auctions around the world, and cognac is one of the most influential spirits, not only for tasting, but also for a small category in the vast collection of collectors.
In 2014, at the "La Part des Anges 2014" cognac charity auction hosted by the French Cognac Authority, a bottle of "Rémy Martin 290th Anniversary Limited Edition 1".Model 5L", with an estimate of 15,000 euros, was finally sold for 39,000 euros, becoming the winner of that auction.
Rémy Martin 290th Anniversary Limited Edition 15L model.
The market appeal of Rémy Martin can be seen from this. As one of the representative cognac brands, each of Rémy Martin's irreproducible creations has great collection value and potential, and the commemorative wine of the entire 100-year edition can only be encountered once in a hundred years, and it is truly unattainable.