From its renegade roots to eighties boardroom battles, luxury cognac brand Hennessy has lived through interesting times, says Joseph Piercy

In his multi-platinum-selling hit “One Dance”, Canadian rapper and R&B star Drake mentions that he has a Hennessy in in hand. In this, he continues a long-standing trope in hip hop of namechecking the French cognac brand, a trend that goes back at least to the 1990s. Hennessy has been mentioned in over 1,000 songs by black artists, and the brand has a unique place in African American culture. As far back as the 1950s, Hennessy actively targeted the black community by placing full-page adverts featuring black models in African American magazines such as Ebony and Jet using the tagline: “The Civilised Way to Open Doors to Success”. The company was also one of the first major corporations to enact DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) in its recruitment strategies, notably promoting black Olympic long-jumper Herb Douglas to the role of Vice President for Urban Market Development, with a seat on the board of directors – unprecedented in corporate America in 1963.

In the 1990s, after a string of vocal endorsements from the likes of Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre, a bottle of Hennessy cognac became as much a part of hip hop chic as a pair of Air Jordans and a chunky gold chain. In recent years however, the company has become mired in a series of scandals and controversies that threaten to irreparably damage the reputation of this once-noble, family-run drinks marque.

Hennessy cognac was formed in 1765 by Richard Hennessy, a renegade Irish soldier who was exiled to France because of his Jacobite sympathies and who fought in the Army of Louis XV. After retiring from service, Hennessy settled in Cognac and set up a business distilling and exporting brandy. His son James took over the business and appointed Jean Fillioux as the distillery’s Master Blender. A member of the Fillioux family has held the position ever since, a lineage spanning eight generations and over 250 years.

James Hennessy and his son Maurice were responsible for several historical innovations in cognac production, including the star grading system and the creation of a VSOP classification, the latter at the behest of cognac enthusiast George IV, who challenged Hennessy to produce a “very superior old pale” variety, a taxonomy previously only applied to sherry. (VSOP requires the blend to be aged in French oak barrels for a minimum of four years before bottling.)

The brand continued to prosper throughout the 19th century, cornering a 25% share of the cognac market internationally. After the Second World War, the company reins were taken up by Killian Hennessy, who is widely credited with positioning Hennessy as a luxury brand and breaking into lucrative markets in China, Japan and other Asian countries, including North Korea, whose former Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il was so enamoured with the drink that he had a personal import account with Hennessy worth $700,000 a year.

Things started to go badly “south” for Hennessey with the LVMH affair in 1987. Killian Hennessy had overseen a successful merger with champagne house Moët & Chandon in the 1970s and, fearing the sort of aggressive corporate takeovers common in the 1980s, decided on a “stronger together” approach and proposed a further merger with fashion house Louis Vuitton to form LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy). Needing further investment to expand and cement LVMH’s position as the world’s leading luxury brand, Louis Vuitton CEO Henri Racamier and Moët Hennessy Vice President Alain Chevalier invited businessman Bernard Arnault to invest in LVMH. Unbeknown to Racamier and Chevalier, Arnault had been surreptitiously buying up LVMH stock and conducting clandestine meetings with the Guinness family – LVMH’s major shareholder and Moët Hennessy’s distributor. The irony was that by getting Arnault on-board, LVMH left themselves exposed to the sort of hostile boardroom coup they’d been trying desperately to avoid.

By mid-1988 Arnault had acquired 43.5% of LVMH and a bitter power struggle ensued. Arnault ousted Racamier and Chevalier from the boardroom and effectively sidelined the Hennessy and Vuiton families (Racamier was married to the Vuitton heiress Odile Vuitton). Racamier responded by accusing Arnault of fraudulent and criminal business practices, with multiple court cases following. Arnault embarked upon a very public smear campaign, dragging up Louis Vuitton’s war-time Nazi collaborations and leaking to the press the supposed existence of a “home movie” showing Racamier teaching his children how to “goose-step”.

In the end, President François Mitterrand intervened by taking the extraordinary measure of going on national television to plead for peace between the warring factions. By 1990 the courts had largely found in Arnault’s favour (give or take the odd defamation case) because although what he did was highly unethical, he hadn’t actually broken the law, or at least if he had it couldn’t be soundly proven.

Arnault has remained as CEO of LVMH for the last three decades, a divisive figure never far from controversy. In the aftermath of the Notre Dame fire in 2019, Arnault and LVMH pledged €200 million towards the restoration and rebuilding, a gesture which was initially applauded until it became clear that the seeming act of philanthropy was tied up in a tax avoidance scheme. Arnault was also implicated in the trial of former French spy master Bernard Squarcini, who was convicted of using the French intelligence service to conduct industrial espionage on behalf of LVMH to unmask a blackmailer and dig up dirt on former journalist and arch Arnault critic, François Ruffin. Arnault, unsurprisingly, denied all knowledge of Squarcini’s activities despite previously employing Squarcini in a lucrative consultancy role at LVMH.

And just when things can’t get any worse for LVMH, up steps Maria Gasparovic, the former chief of staff to Moët Hennessy’s wine and spirits global head of distribution, who is suing the firm for €1.3 million (US$1.5m) in damages and compensation. Gasparovic alleges she was told she needed “anti-seduction” training after a client of Moët Hennessy’s claimed she had tried to seduce them in a hotel room. Gasparovic also claims she was subjected to “unfounded and sexist rumours” and “acts of denigration” and “sexual harassment”. Moët Hennessy deny all of Gasparovic’s allegations, claiming she was dismissed for gross misconduct in office. The story looks set to run and run as indeed do the scandals involving LVMH. Surely a Netflix series must be in the pipeline with an accompanying hip hop soundtrack.

This article is from Idler #105.

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