L’Succession J.S. in the glass is wonderful in all ways. The color is a soft, muted, golden nut brown, and the aroma is enticing with heady notes of warm fruit breads, roasted nuts and subdued spices teasing the nose and memory.
On the palate it is sublimely rich, soft, velvety and pervasive, expanding gently to entirely fill the mouth, engaging the senses, with the overall impression of a spirit fully resolved in all its elements, fully agreeable in all ways, with surpassing warmth, as if with some sort of internal perfusion that emanates slowly and with focused persistence.
There is absolutely no harshness or bite or sting to this cognac; it is suffused with warmth, rounded to perfection and all aromas and flavors and textures are fully integrated and harmonious. Hedonism wars with restraint here: the cognac is so enticing you want to devour it, but you sip slowly and savor it in your mouth, letting the aromas trickle up into your olfactory bulb to lavish the senses. This is a superb cognac to linger over, to relax and let the flavors come, to resonate with the harmony of the spirit.
Curiously, the more you engage with the l’Succession J.S. the less you concern yourself with the advanced age. Yes, it is indicative of its 1929 heritage, but not only that: it is an entirety in and of itself, a profound and singular thing, no matter the provenance. And of course the French have an expression for this, as they seem to have for all things inexplicable, an expression that doesn’t translate easily and efficiently to English, but which seems to say everything that needs to be said: Hors d’Age (pronounced ‘Ohr-dahzh’), which means, loosely, “beyond age.”
L’Succession J.S. is truly Hors d’Age.
Full article here, if interested: http://www.examiner.com/article/as-good-as-it-gets-courvoisier-l-succession-j-s-cognac