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CENTURIES-OLD brands like Hennessy, Martell and Remy Martin are the pride and joy of Cognac, a town north of Bordeaux, France, making the name Cognac famous world-wide.

But Grey Goose vodka? Few people in Cognac have ever heard of it.

Most residents of Cognac, where Grey Goose is blended and bottled, have no idea that their town is home to the world's most popular superpremium vodka. Indeed, the wheat-based drink, which Bacardi of Bermuda snapped up for US$2 billion (about R12 billion) over the (European) summer, has a low profile at home. Cognac chateaux crowd the centre of town, but the only building bearing the name of Grey Goose is a boxy gray structure on the side of the highway.

Grey Goose isn't sold anywhere in France, except for a few Parisian bars frequented by American tourists. The French don't drink their own vodka - they prefer wine.
   But why, if the French don't drink their own vodka, is France piling into the vodka game? It started by chance when Sidney Frank, the owner of Sidney Frank Importing Company of New Rochelle, New York, needed a vodka to put inside the brand and bottle he had created. He approached H. Mounier, a small Cognac house, which concocted what is now sold as Grey Goose.

Cognac turned out to be a perfect place to make vodka. Faced with a stagnant Cognac market overcrowded with smaller labels, Cognac makers were willing to try something new.

"The cellar masters in Cognac are used to working with fine liquid," says Jean-Marc Gautier-Auriol, the site director at H. Mounier who oversees Grey Goose production. "The experience coming from Cognac was transferred to another luxury liquid."

The French version of the tasteless, colourless, odourless liquid, spiked with France's image of savoir-vivre and high-class living, is driving the superpremium-vodka category, priced at more than $30 (about R180) for a 750ml bottle, which represents 18 percent of all imported vodka by volume in this country.

In the US, the largest vodka market, Grey Goose leads the super-premium segment, with more than two-thirds of the segment's 2,1 million cases sold in the US, according to Impact Databank. LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton's Polish-produced Belvedere brand is the second-biggest superpremium label in the US, according to Impact Databank, which monitors the industry.

French vodka had a 3,5 percent share by volume of the overall 42 million cases of vodka sold in the US last year, according to Adams Beverage Group, a trade group.
   Analysts say that local touch is what gives French vodka its appeal."That is very sexy," says Darrell Jursa, a managing partner at drinks consultancy Liquid Intelligence in Chicago.

"Picture golden sunshine on the hayfield in Provence in July, a French peasant who's driving the old tractor from the '50s and he cares about each leaf."