In the 13th century, Dutch boats came regularly to the Saintonge coast to collect salt and started buying some of its wines for their trading activities in Northern Europe. The Poitou wines were very successful and became popular in Northern countries, hence a considerable development of commerce in the Charente region.

By the 16th century, wine was produced in great quantities, but unfortunately, it did not keep well and its quality was not up to long sea journeys.

To counteract this and once back home, the Dutch merchants thought of transforming this wine into what they called ‘burned wine’, the initial steps into the distillation process.

In the 17th century, the Charente wine producers introduced double distillation. The resulting spirit was transported in oak barrels, and it soon became obvious that its quality was greatly improved by the contact with oak wood.
This is how Cognac was born. At the time, trading posts organised all the traffic, collecting spirits in the entire region to sell abroad in bulk.

In the middle of the 19th century, merchant companies expanded and sold Cognac in bottles rather than bulk. This is when - in 1858 - Henri Mounier founded his own company.

Around 1875 however, the phyloxera vine disease appeared in Charente, destroying most of the vineyards; the local economy was not going to recover from this calamity for many years.

In the 20th century however, productivity returned when the vineyards were planted with Ugni Blanc vines, extremely resistant to disease. The fame of Cognac was then to grow ever wider and greater.