There is a tendency to assume that a bottle is defined by the liquid it holds. Raw materials, fermentation, distillation, wood and ageing. Yet in the world of spirits, liquid rarely acts alone. Alongside the substance sits the name, and a name, once printed on a label, produces tangible effects. A label is a condensed historical document, preserving traces of vanished regulatory systems, commercial vocabularies that have fallen out of use, and categories that once seemed entirely natural.
Cognac, Arzente and the Value of Spirits Labels
One of the most famous examples is the disappearance of the Italian Cognac and the Spanish Coñac. For decades, the prestige of the French name had travelled far beyond its geographic origin, to the point that it was used for grape spirits produced well outside the Charente. France’s gradual reassertion of the denomination, through agreements, legal protections, and increasingly strict origin rules, steadily narrowed that space, restoring Cognac exclusively to France. Italy, interestingly, once attempted to create its own term. During the period when the national lexicon sought to distance itself from foreign words, Gabriele D’Annunzio proposed Arzente for these grape spirits. The word never took hold, though its failure makes it particularly revealing. It shows that even the naming of a distillate could become a site of linguistic invention, cultural ambition, even a political statement about language itself.
Whiskey and Whisky: One Letter Dividing Two Identities
At times, an entire centuries-long rivalry between spirits can be distilled into less than a full word. A single letter, added or omitted on a label, can shift everything. The “e” in Irish whiskey represents far more than an orthographic variation. It is an identity statement compressed into a vowel. Rarely has such a small mark carried so much weight in shaping the perceived value of a bottle. The distinction became firmly established in the nineteenth century, when Irish producers adopted that spelling as part of a broader effort to distinguish themselves from their Scottish counterparts and assert a separate product identity. Around that single letter, a commercial and symbolic rivalry took shape, one that eventually extended well beyond Europe: American producers, often of Irish descent, retained the Emerald Isle spelling, while Japan, drawing inspiration from Scotland, embraced the shorter form.
Spirits Labels: Rhum Agricole and the Case of Rhum Fantasia
Some labels challenge geography altogether. One striking example is the only European AOP produced outside the European continent: Martinique’s rhum agricole. A Caribbean distillate presented through the formal grammar of French appellations, its label tells a story of sovereignty, legal frameworks, and commercial hierarchies. Martinique, a French overseas department, belongs to the Caribbean while speaking the regulatory language of the great French wines of origin.
And while on the subject of rhum and its peculiarities, there is also a product that, in a sense, does not exist: Italy’s Rhum Fantasia. The term carries something theatrical, almost allegorical, while describing a product born from fiscal constraints, shortages of raw materials, and industrial adaptation. Such a name is far more than decorative language; it is the solution a system devised to classify something that resisted cleaner categories, shaped by taxation, limited resources, manufacturing adjustments, and Europe’s long history of substitutes and reinterpretations. It was not, in fact, rum in the sense the word suggests today, but a reworked alcohol base designed to recreate the flavour of the distillate through aromatics, blending, and, naturally, sugar.
In some cases, the connection to Central European Inländer Rum or verschnitt products is unmistakable. That explains why Rhum Fantasia developed a genuine social life of its own, widely used in pastry-making and as the foundation of Ponce Livornese, the proto- cocktail born in one of the Mediterranean’s great ports, where the sight of the British fleet — fuelled by rhum-based punch — was once commonplace, inspiring a local reinterpretation that survives in adapted form to this day. Through a contemporary lens, it can appear anomalous. Historically, it is the entirely coherent product of its system.
Arrack and the Story of a Name Without Borders
There is one final case that complicates the picture further, almost by moving in the opposite direction. The word Arrack did not emerge to define a single, precise product. Instead, it expanded into an extraordinarily broad term that, for centuries, encompassed very different spirits. Distillates made from palm, coconut, molasses, or rice could all fall under the same name. In European commercial vocabularies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Arrack often functioned as an umbrella category, capable of containing diverse liquids within a single designation. If Cognac illustrates how a geographic name can expand until it approaches a common noun, Arrack suggests the reverse: an oversized category that only much later fragmented into distinct identities. This, too, belongs to the history of labels, and perhaps it is among the most revealing chapters, because it shows that the name does not always follow the product. Sometimes, it comes first. Sometimes, it contains far more than the liquid itself.
The article first appeared on Coqtail – for fine drinkers. Order your copy here
Artworks by Coqtail – all rights reserved
