WANTED MAGAZINE, COVER STORY
LUNCH WITH MAURICE RICHARD HENNESSY
The brand ambassador for Hennessy is also the 8th generation family member to work in the family business. Over lunch, Kate White tries to persuade Maurice Richard Hennessy he is genetically predetermined for the job, but discovers that he had other callings along the way.
Family and brand are not the same thing to Maurice Richard Hennessy. He reminds me of this twice, even though I ask him three times. The last time I ask he spoons his soup delicately into the corner of his mouth, and shakes his head slightly. Again, no.
As part of the Hennessy family – the number one selling cognac brand in the world, and the supplier of forty per cent of the world’s Cognac – I’d expected Mr Hennessy to be the brand personified.
He is, after all, the direct descendent of Richard Hennessy, the Irishman who arrived in Cognac in 1765 as a solider of the Irish Brigade and liked the area so much that he stayed and began distilling eau de vie. Maurice lives on the family farm in Cognac, travels the globe as the brand ambassador and yet he reminds me that he “is paid like a worker, just like everyone else in the group”.
The group is LVMH – Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy. LVMH represent over sixty brands and can best described as the largest (and the first) luxury brand conglomerate in the world. How is business? He smiles: “Luxury exists since the human being exists. You can look back to Egyptian history.”
The brand manager, slightly nervous but very well dressed, hovers nearby. Hennessy is a powerful brand – rapped about by Kanye and the gang. Maurice jokes: “Perhaps because it rhymes well?”
The endorsement is not cultivated and it’s also not new – Hennessy has long held favour with African Americans, a respect that dates back to the World Wars.
“The American army brought some African Americans to Europe. In America they were not entitled to get out of the camps, to drink. In France they were free. They heard of Hennessy and it was probably thought of as a drink for a smart man. And the soldiers could have it if they wanted to. So they chose it.”
It’s a late-autumn day, chopped clouds over a low horizon and we’re lunching at The Saxon. The décor is unremarkable, best described as inoffensively African by myself, and “beige, yellowish, beige” by Hennessy.
Like the distinct flavour of the cognac he is extremely well cultivated, very European (obviously), genial, charming, and with such perfect savoir-faire I only manage to break through his interview persona on two occasions. Something about his approaching 35th wedding anniversary makes him quiet, suddenly deeply melancholic, but he looks away and does not elaborate.
He met his wife at a dance in Paris and they have three daughters and three grandchildren. He’s admits that he is “certainly not a very good grandfather. I am not fascinated by babies. One day I will start to be more interested, but not now”.
Hennessy grew up in the Paris suburb of Neuilly. His mother is “dead! Dead as a dodo, but what a darling.” She played the piano beautifully, did not cook and when he was fourteen let him illustrate her children’s book. “My grandfather paid for it – as a present he gave her the editing and printing. When I reread it is a bit naïve. She wrote a lot of bad things, and I illustrated them!”
Regarding his father, he also mentions his death: “He was a nuclear scientist. Sadly he is dead for a long, long time. I regret every day what I did not ask my father when he was alive.”
Like what? “Like what is happening in Japan. I know what is happening, but my father would have been able to explain it all to me”.
His brother and sisters are not directly part of the family business. His sister has concentrated on her family and his brother was a banker until he moved to the Hennessy home in Ireland, where you can stay and learn to fish salmon.
For a time he wasn’t going to be part of the cognac side of the business either. The wine steward appears at this moment. Hennessy looks at the menu. “Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay?” he asks me.
It is right about then that I decide to help Maurice – a man who not only knows his liquors (see all of the above), but also has a small vineyard of his very own – to order our wine. I tap a favourite South African winemaker. “Lovely,” I declare. Very quietly he replies: “That year is much too old for this grape”. He picks the French Bouchard Aine & Fils and orders both specials of the day – a leek and potato soup, and the fish.
Before embarking on his career in liquor, Hennessy had other dreams. First, he went to West Africa. What were you doing there? “Oh, but saving the world, what else! If you did not save the world in the 70s you were nothing!” His family were delighted about this pursuit – the early 70s, their son setting forth to West Africa, running the admin side of a hospital in Wagadugu, in what is now Burkina Faso.
Our mains arrive. Mine, an amalgamation of delicately seared calf liver, mince, vetkoek and fried onion rings is fantastic – even though it’s plated in the a-piece-here-a-piece-there culinary hoopla (apologies for the word, but it is entirely accurate) of hotel restaurants, the attention to flavour-detail is delicate yet homely. Maurice’s fish of the day looks like a Global Wrap. I want to laugh. I also want to taste it, but we’re not really friends yet and so a “delicious” followed by a “very, very delicious” will have to suffice.
After Wagadugu he and a colleague went further inland and ran a literacy program, then a fishing cooperative, and trained people to use oxen to farm. When he returned, he “was very happy to have a promise from my uncle for a job”.
But what did Maurice Richard Hennessy really want to do? And suddenly, the man himself, not the brand ambassador, appears. His face lightens, his hands open up and he breaks into a cracking, huge grin. “A farmer. I am in love with cows! I thought it was just me,” he is laughing, “but now but I realise there are a lot of people who are in love with cows. And their big eyes: they are thinking animals, they do it slowly”. He smiles happily.
The service at The Saxon is impeccable – they even stagger the arrival of a double espresso, single espresso and dessert so that we finish at the same time.
Two minutes before the end of allotted time Maurice finishes the last bite of his chocolate tarte, places his desert fork down, dabs both sides of his mouth, invites me to visit the Hennessy farm when I am in France this summer, and shakes my hand.
It’s likely that the invitation is more business etiquette than personal (the farm is open to the public) but, clutching my autographed bottle of Hennessy, I decide that I might just use his mobile number and pop in and visit. I just might.
END
MENU
Starters
Leek and potato soup. Maurice: “Delicious. Yes.”
Caramelised tofu salad
Mains
Fish of the day
Vetkoek
Dessert
Chocolate tarte: Maurice: “Do you think I should have the chocolate tarte? I have an hour and half of photographing after this – I think I should have the chocolate tarte”.
Espresso
I am hugely fussy about coffee and will go as far as to call my espresso perfect. Maurice concurs: “Good. It doesn’t cost that much energy to make a good coffee, and if the coffee is bad then the other’s things are bad. Life is too short for bad coffee.”
Service
Impeccable. 10/10
Ambience
Understated
