Originally Posted by
peter h
Are you sure? I always understood that Cognac and Armagnac were made by distilling the wine made from the grapes grown in those regions. Made in the normal way, but yielding a lowish alcohol wine not fit for much else other than distillation.
Pomace brandy (like Grappa and Marc you mentioned) is made by distilling the leftovers after winemaking (including grape skins) - so, after any grape juice has been removed to be fermented into wine
Yep you can of course go into details and highlight differences so indeed, Cognac and Armagnac use the whole must, Marc only use the solid residue (the pomace) but not the juice. As someone else mentioned, Cognac also uses double distillation (but it wasn’t historically so) and Armagnac single. Ultimately, grape based spirits have plenty other siblings such as many in the balkans which use the Marc but flavour it with aniseed and/or various herbs etc.