Maurice Richard Hennessy

Hennessy Global Ambassador

What were your expectations coming to Jamaica for the first time?

I came to Jamaica expecting Africa with Bob Marley. I left realising that Jamaica is a lot more than Bob Marley. It’s an amazing, beautiful country. Things are modern, it’s a great tourist spot, and people come from North America on holiday, hopefully they can come more often from Europe, because where we come from, sadly, it’s very damaged from what’s happening [the recent bombings in France].

No pressure at all. My father was a nuclear scientist so he was not pushing me to join the family business. In fact, when I was a teenager I was more inclined to working on the farm, rearing cattle and animals, more than any business acumen, and my father would tell me of course, “don’t join the cognac business, it’s not for you”, and it’s really by chance as it happens that I did an internship with a company that was distributing, among other things, Hennessy, in the Paris region when I suddenly realised it was amazing to be able to sell a drink with a history, one that I could say my great grandfather did this, my great-great-great-grandfather did that and my grandfather did that. My grandfather was of much help because he actually trained me to be “Mr Hennessy”.

Four. Three girls and one boy. It’s so funny, the birth of my grandson. I was at dinner in China when I received a WhatsApp message from my son-in-law saying my daughter Alice was in labour and they were stuck in traffic. They made it to the fire brigade where they saw five people who haven’t been told how to deliver babies. Thank God, there was a nurse there, and they called another brigade with an ambulance car, and she delivered my grandson in the ambulance car surrounded by firemen, and the baby was wrapped up in one of those cloths from the hospital with gold chocolate paper. He’s one year old now, the next generation of Hennessy; he will be tough.

— Hennessy is made in the town of Cognac, a very small town in the south-west of France, where 18-and-a-half thousand people live.

— Cognac is not really a big factory where you put some grapes on one side and the Hennessy comes out on the other side; in fact, these 70,000 hectares are grown by 4,500 wine-growers, and I’m one of them. I own my vineyard, I make my wine, I distill my wine; when I say I, I mean my people, they do that and I will store it in aging storehouses for two or three years, then I send it to Hennessy.

— If you visit Hennessy you will see aging storehouses where they age some of the cognac they buy at two or three years old, which they might keep for up to 50 years; it depends on the quality.

— Hennessy has the same family of blenders since the early 19th century; Yann Fillioux is the 7th generation of the Fillioux family to work for Hennessy. He is assisted by a tasting committee of six tasters, who are local experts who are trained with him and work with him.

— We’ve made a special cognac called the Hennessy 250 Collector Blend. Each of the 60,000 Limited Edition bottles, designed by Stephanie Balini, is individually numbered and enclosed in a specially designed deluxe gift box: a graphic silver map on a luxurious copper metallic surface — evoking Hennessy’s 250-year adventure of international expansion, crafting the future since 1765.

Well, I was here in 2012 for Jamaica’s celebration of 50 years of being independent. I came here for your birthday, so I invite you for my 250-year-old birthday. Hennessy is number one in Jamaica, which is, like many of the Caribbean islands, a major customer of Hennessy. I think it’s because my team here does a tremendous job, and also because Jamaicans like good things.

Five years ago. You have to prepare the blends and they are then chosen by a specialist, and one is decided on. Then you have the bottle design made, prepare the market, prepare the parties. It’s a lot of planning so you have to be thinking of it years before. Plus, for this particular cognac, we had special aging in 250 barrels of 250 litres.

I will go to Puerto Rico. It’s been wild, doing about 40 or 50 trips. There are some countries that the press hasn’t met me, some countries I visit every so often and the press is not even interested anymore. But there are always new customers, VIPs and special people who want to learn our stories from me, more than reading it. When I leave Jamaica, I’ll be heading to Puerto Rico, and after that Santo Domingo, then I’ll be back home for the holidays.

The story of Hennessy shows that in earlier times, Richard’s son, James, was already travelling to places like Ireland, London and possibly the neutral territories of Holland, because that’s where business was, you had to go there. We have at Hennessy, five kilometres of archives of the films in 1765, all the letters written, and copies of the letters received. We realise that a lot of the travelling was meeting the real people, our customers. My uncles, for example, before they did anything of importance, my grandfather was sending them all over the world to do what I am doing now. The only difference is that now I still do it at my age.

They have made it more appealing to the younger generation, let’s say that. It is true the trend was more cognac is a drink for an older, portly gentleman in front of a fireplace with a sleeping Labrador, fat cigar, and all of that. This is still true; people at any age enjoy cognac, but if you go to a nightclub in Atlanta, Georgia, or even here in Jamaica, you see bottles of Pure White, bottles of Hennessy VS, or on the rocks.

Each year, we buy much more cognac than we sell. For many reasons, one is simply we are developing; secondly, it’s because it’s evaporating; thirdly, we have to buy more because we don’t know how the vintage is going to be next year, and so on.

Fun; the love of fun. I find this job amazing! It allows you to meet wonderful people all over the world. Especially since the 21st century I think I’ve done things which I’ve never dreamt of doing. I was travelling a lot before, but it was not as exciting, until my cousin retired and I’m able to do much more, and it’s much more fun.