What does Napoleon mean on a cognac bottle?

Within the Cognac appellation, Napoleon is a legal age class and stands for compte 6, so a maturation of at least six years in oak.

The appellation regulation links every permitted designation to a minimum compte, and for Napoleon that compte is 6. The designation is only about age. It says nothing about the house, about the sub-area where the grapes stood, or about the style of the house. A cognac without this designation may be older than a cognac with it, because the compte is a lower limit and not a statement of the actual age.

Napoleon is between VSOP and XO: VSOP requires compte 4, Napoleon compte 6 and XO compte 10.

In the regulations there are more steps than the three well-known ones. Compte 2 belongs to VS, 3 Étoiles, Sélection, De Luxe and Very Special. Compte 3 belongs to supérieur, compte 4 to VSOP, Very Superior Old Pale, Réserve, Vieux, Rare and Royal, and compte 5 to Vieille Réserve. After Napoleon at compte 6 comes compte 10 for XO, Extra Old, Hors d’âge and Extra. For XXO and Extra Extra Old a maturation of fourteen years or more applies. XO moved from compte 6 to compte 10 on 1 April 2018, which made the gap with Napoleon larger than it had been before.

The compte is the official ageing account of the appellation and determines which age statement a cognac may carry.

Each harvest gets its own account. The distillation of a harvest must be completed by 31 March of the year after that harvest at the latest, and from that point the account runs along with the years the eau-de-vie spends on oak. Cognac may only be sold after at least two years of uninterrupted maturation on oak. Because almost every bottle is a blend of several eaux-de-vie, the statement, according to EU Regulation 2019/787, applies to the youngest alcoholic component in the bottle. Compliance is checked via the material accounts that the houses submit to the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac.

Outside the Cognac appellation, Napoleon is not a legal age class, but almost always a brand or fantasy name without a fixed minimum age.

EU Regulation 2019/787 on spirit drinks does not recognize the terms VS, VSOP, XO and Napoleon; those belong to the French appellation rules. For brandy, that regulation only requires maturation of at least one year in oak casks of 1,000 liters or more, or six months in smaller casks, at an alcohol strength of at least 36 percent. Mandarine Napoleon is a different case: that is not a cognac but a mandarin liqueur of 38 percent, in which cognac is used. There, Napoleon refers to the brand and not to an age. So always read the designation together with the category on the label.

In Bathmen there are 134 bottles of French cognac of 38 to 46 percent, spread over 32 brands, with an alcohol percentage of 40 to 45.3 percent.

The biggest brands are Frapin with 17 bottles, Hennessy with 15, Château Montifaud with 11 and Remy Martin with 10. Next come Camus, Godet and Martell with 6 bottles each, Joseph Guy with 5, and Courvoisier, Hine, Menard and Naud with 4 each. The whole cognac shelf counts 145 items, and of those three bottles carry the designation Napoleon in the name. In the shop you can look at a VSOP, a Napoleon and an XO of the same house side by side and compare the labels.