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“My grandchildren were attending school on the computer, but they were very happy not to be in a flat in Paris,” he says. “We have a large garden so they were very happy.”

As representative of one of the big four big spirits producers around Cognac (the others are Remy Martin, Courvoisier and Martell), Hennessy feels the weight of responsibility as a custodian of the land – and felt it even more during the challenging pandemic years.

One thing he prioritised was how to generate economic activity for those whose vocation was not related to agriculture.

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“A lot of the tradesmen were out of work, and travelling for work was restricted, so we had a lot of upgrades done to the properties,” he says. “These plans were always in the works, but I guess we had a lot of it done during the pandemic.”

A look at LVMH’s annual financial results for 2022 will tell you that Hennessy was a big contributor to the luxury powerhouse’s profits. In fact, it had the most profitable year in its history.

In 2022, LVMH made €79.2 billion (US$86.6 billion) in revenue, and wines and spirits accounted for almost 10 per cent of that. Revenue from cognac and spirits was up 14 per cent year on year.

Julien Mameaux, Hennessy’s business development director for Asia-Pacific, attributed the success to one factor – agility. “We always knew e-commerce was a sales channel of the future, but we had to pivot very quickly and expand staff in that department to keep up with demand.”

Another challenge during the pandemic was logistics. Citing the Ukraine-Russia war, Mameaux said: “We had to close our Eastern European distribution centre and relocate it.

“During the pandemic, the situation with shipping routes and ports would change all the time, but we adapted very quickly.”

Wine grapes are under threat from rising average global temperatures, along with the frequency and severity of droughts, heatwaves and other erratic weather patterns.

Grapes are considered an indicator crop because they are particularly vulnerable to changes in temperature, water supply, and sun exposure, which means climate change is not good news for cognac production.

With a few bumper years in revenue, Hennessy has reinvested a lot of its profits into sustainability research and initiatives.

“We started using special bins for batteries on our properties and anyone in the region is welcome to come and discard their old batteries. This is something small but I’m quite proud of it,” says Hennessy.

The company has committed to transitioning to using low-carbon and renewable energy. In 2021, ethanol-based fuel was used exclusively in vehicles used for local and inter-site transport. In 2022, Hennessy also signed agreements to use biogas as fuel for all its administrative and industrial sites.

Possibly the most interesting of the cognac producers’ initiatives is its research and development in sustainable wine grape growing. By 2021, Hennessy had already achieved zero herbicide use in all its vineyards, and has set a goal of achieving the same thing for all its partner winegrowers.

However, herbicides are only the beginning. Millions of euros are being poured into finding eco-friendly solutions to grape growing, such as research on diseases, vines that can adapt to climate change and finding wild vines from the Cognac area that are naturally resistant to pests.

Investment has been made in developing an eco-responsible robot to treat the soil instead of using herbicides, mobile antifreeze towers to combat frost, anti-hail nets and more.

Climate change takes a collective effort to resolve and Hennessy has made some of its research open-source to help promote sustainable farming.

“We are working very closely with agronomists and scientists to make sure that the soil our vines grow in is sustainable,” says Hennessy. “We are not keeping this research to ourselves, we are sharing our findings with our competitors and also the general industry and anyone who is interested in soils.”

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