The bouquet of a brandy is the name given to the odor and cannot be detected from the chemical point of view. It is certain that the bouquet owes its properties chiefly to the ethers, esters and volatile oils.

It plays a very important part physiologically and organo-leptically in the brandy itself. The medicinal properties of a brandy, if there be any, are considered to be to some extent due to the bouquet, and the impressions which it makes upon the olfactory nerves, and its exciting effects upon the digestive glands. The bouquet of a brandy cannot be ascertained in the ordinary method of drinking from a small glass, nor from the odor alone which emanates from the bottle when the cork is withdrawn. The true way of ascertaining the bouquet of brandy is to use a very large glass, holding at least half a liter, and of sufficient size so that the mouth and the nostrils and the greater part of the face can be included within the circumference of the glass when the brandy is sipped. A few drops of brandy, when placed in a glass of this kind, and at the proper temperature, which should be between 70 and 80°F., develops very rapidly its bouquet, so that when the glass is raised to the lips the full impression of the bouquet upon the receptive nerves is secured. These minute components of the bouquet, are difficult to separate. Many of them are found in the wine itself from which the brandy is made, yet, as has already been stated, distillation of brandy is usually from the young wine, and when of this age it has not developed the bouquet which wines of older age possess. These odoriferous substances which exist in the wine are carried over by the distillation and there increased and modified by the processes of ageing to which the brandy is subsequently subjected. It is very difficult to describe, so evanescent a thing as the bouquet of fine brandy. It is only the connoisseur who, by long years of practice has developed his abilities to discriminate, can distinguish in a proper way the delicacy of the bouquet.