Cocktails with Brandy
Brandy is a spirit distilled from wine or fermented fruit, usually aged in oak. Labeled just "brandy", it’s the grape kind; fruit brandies carry their own names — Calvados from apples, kirsch from cherries.
ABV40%On most bottles — the legal floor for Cognac. Stronger bottlings exist.
Substitutes for Brandy
Aged grape spirit is a broad family and the bottles inside it are genuinely interchangeable; what differs is age, region and price. The label word tells you less than the age statement does.
On the label
- VS / VSOP / XO
- A grade counts from the youngest eau-de-vie in the blend — VS at least 2 years, VSOP 4, XO 10 — so the number is a floor and not a description.
- Napoléon
- Not a brand and not the top tier but a fixed rung: at least six years, sitting between VSOP and XO — below XO, despite the grand name.
- Solera
- On a Spanish brandy this marks a method rather than an age — fractional aging, where older brandy is continuously blended with younger.
Often confused with
Cognac, Armagnac and Spanish brandy
