VS, VSOP or XO? What the Letters on a Cognac Bottle Legally Mean (2026) — the 2018 Rule Change, and 8 Bottles from $35.99
There are three letters on almost every bottle of cognac sold in America, and most people buying one have been told they mean "good, better, best." That is not what they mean. VS, VSOP and XO are legal age minimums, defined and policed by the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac, and each one tells you exactly one fact: how long the youngest spirit in the blend sat in oak before it was bottled.
That distinction — youngest, not average — is the single most useful thing to understand before you spend money here. It is the same trap as age statements on tawny port or Scotch: the number on the label is a floor, not a description. Two XO cognacs can both be legal and taste a decade apart.
If you are entirely new to the category, our beginner's guide to cognac covers how the spirit is made and where it comes from. This piece assumes you know that much and answers the buying question instead.
Here is what each rung actually buys you, what changed in 2018 that makes XO a genuinely different proposition than it was a decade ago, and — the part most guides skip — the three houses on this shelf where you can buy every rung of the same ladder and taste the difference for yourself.
The eight bottles in this guide
The ladder, in law
Cognac ages on a clock called the compte. It starts on 1 April following the harvest, and it stops the day the spirit leaves oak for glass — cognac does not age in the bottle. Every classification below is a minimum for the youngest eau-de-vie in the blend:
- VS ("Very Special", sometimes three stars) — at least 2 years.
- VSOP ("Very Superior Old Pale", sometimes Réserve) — at least 4 years.
- Napoléon — at least 6 years.
- XO ("Extra Old") — at least 10 years.
- XXO ("Extra Extra Old") — at least 14 years.
- Hors d'Âge — legally identical to XO. It is a marketing term houses use for bottlings they consider beyond the XO category, and it carries no extra guarantee.
Note what is missing from that list: any mention of quality, cru, grape, or cask. The ladder measures time and nothing else.
The 2018 change that made XO mean more
Until 1 April 2018, XO required only 6 years. The BNIC raised it to 10 — a change first floated in 2016 and finally enforced in 2018, with a grace period letting six-to-nine-year XO already in bottle be sold through 31 March 2019.
The stated reason was that regulation had fallen behind reality: most houses were already blending XO well past the old minimum, and the 6-year floor described almost nothing on the market. The practical consequence for a buyer today is that the gap between VSOP and XO is now legally wider than it has ever been — four years against ten. If you last bought an XO before 2018 and thought the step up was not worth the money, the bottle you would buy today is a different product.
It also explains the price cliff. On this shelf VSOP runs roughly $55–$75 and XO starts around $165. That is not a margin decision; it is six additional years of a warehouse holding stock that cannot be sold.
The controlled experiment: one house, three rungs
Every guide tells you VSOP is smoother than VS. Almost none lets you test it without changing four variables at once. Buy a VS from one house and an XO from another and you have changed the cellar master, the cru mix, the barrel programme and the age — and learned nothing about age.
Three houses here carry the full ladder, so the only variable that moves is time in oak.
Courvoisier — the cleanest ladder on the shelf
Courvoisier Cognac V.S ($35.99) to Courvoisier Cognac Vsop ($59.99) to Courvoisier XO Cognac ($189.99) is the full 2-to-4-to-10-year climb from one house, and the three price points are far enough apart to make the steps legible. Courvoisier's style leans floral and relatively light, which is useful for this exercise: with less oak weight in the base spirit, the effect of extra years is easier to isolate. There is also Courvoisier 21 Year Cognac ($179.99) and Courvoisier XO Royal Cognac ($239.99) above the XO if you want a fourth rung.
Hennessy — the ladder most people have already started
Hennessy V.S Cognac ($47.99) is the best-selling cognac on earth and the bottle most drinkers have met, which makes it an unusually good baseline: you probably already know what the bottom rung tastes like. Hennessy VSOP Privilege ($74.99) and Hennessy XO Cognac ($189.99) complete the set. Hennessy is also the house where the ladder keeps going well past XO — Hennessy Paradis Rare Cognac ($1299.99) sits at the top of the range, and Hennessy White Cognac ($89.99) is the outlier, a young, unaged-tasting style that is not sold in mainland France.
Rémy Martin — the Fine Champagne ladder
Remy Martin VSOP Cognac ($62.99) and Remy Martin XO Cognac ($169.99) carry something the other two do not: every Rémy Martin in the core range is Fine Champagne, meaning the blend is drawn only from the Grande and Petite Champagne crus, with at least half from Grande Champagne. Sitting between them is Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royal Cognac ($74.99), which is not a legal category at all — it is a VSOP-plus bottling, and a useful demonstration that houses invent rungs when the legal ladder does not fit their stock. At the very top, Remy Martin Louis XIII Grande Cognac ($3999.99) is Grande Champagne only.
If you want to run all three ladders at once without buying nine full bottles, the XO Icons bundle ($549.00) and the XO Connoisseur bundle ($415.00) do the comparison at the top rung. Our guide to what a 30-year tawny actually buys you over a 20 makes the same argument for port, where the numbers mislead in a different way.
The variable the ladder does not measure: cru
Cognac's six growing areas — Grande Champagne, Petite Champagne, Borderies, Fins Bois, Bons Bois and Bois Ordinaires — change the spirit more than a year or two of age does, and almost no bottle at VS or VSOP tells you which it used. Chalk content falls as you move out from the centre; Grande Champagne is the chalkiest and slowest to mature, Borderies the smallest and the one known for a distinct floral, nutty character.
A handful of bottles here are explicit about it, and they are the ones worth buying if you want to taste what cru does rather than what time does. Camus XO Borderies Cognac ($238.99) is single-cru Borderies. Cognac Park Limited Cask Edition 12 Year Borderies ($129.99) is single-cru Borderies finished in Japanese mizunara oak — an unusual bottle and a direct answer to the question of whether cask or cru speaks louder. Delamain Pale and Dry XO Cognac ($149.99) is Grande Champagne, and A.E. Dor XO Cognac ($99.99) likewise.
What to buy at each rung, and why
If it is going in a cocktail, buy VS. A Sidecar or a Vieux Carré has lemon, sugar or vermouth in it, and ten years of barrel nuance does not survive that. Courvoisier Cognac V.S ($35.99) and Hennessy V.S Cognac ($47.99) are both built for it. Camus Intensely Vs Cognac ($44.99) is the punchier option if the drink is a long one. Our Sidecar guide has the build.
If it is a gift or a bottle you will sip occasionally, buy VSOP. This is where the category's value sits. D'Usse VSOP ($54.99), Hine Rare Cognac ($62.99), Naud Cognac VSOP ($54.99) and Martell Blue Swift VSOP Cognac ($59.99) — the last finished in Kentucky bourbon barrels, which makes it the easiest crossover for a whiskey drinker — all sit under $65.
If you already know you like cognac, XO is where the ten-year rule earns its money. Martell XO Extra Fine Cognac ($199.99), Hardy XO Rare Cognac ($149.99), Louis Royer XO Cognac ($128.99), Bache Gabrielsen XO Cognac ($138.99) and Hine Antique XO Premier Cognac ($198.99) span the range. Martell Cordon Bleu Cognac ($174.99) is the odd one out and worth knowing about: it predates the modern category language entirely and is built on Borderies.
Napoléon is the rung nobody talks about, and on this shelf it is thin — Hardy Cognac Napoléon ($69.99) and Meukow Napoléon ($89.99) sit at six years, between VSOP and XO in both age and price. Neither carries a product image yet, which is the usual reason a perfectly good rung goes unsold.
Three things the letters will never tell you
Colour is not age. Caramel colouring (E150a) is legal in cognac and widely used for batch consistency. A darker VSOP is not older than a paler one.
The age is the floor, not the blend. A house whose XO averages 25 years and a house whose XO averages 11 print the same two letters. This is why buying a rung from a house you already trust beats buying a rung blind.
Cognac stops aging in glass. An XO bottled in 2008 is still an XO, not an 28-year-old. Unopened, it will keep for decades; opened, oxidation starts working and a bottle is best finished within a year or two.
Where to start
If you have never deliberately compared rungs, the cheapest honest experiment is the Courvoisier ladder: the VS and the VSOP side by side for under $100 total, poured at the same time, in the same glass. Two years against four, one house, nothing else moving. Whether the step is worth $24 to you is a question only your own palate answers — and once you know, the XO decision answers itself.
Browse the full Cognac collection, the wider Brandy collection, or the Cognac & Brandy range. If a whiskey drinker is the one you are buying for, our guide to what a second barrel actually does to whiskey explains why a cognac-cask finish tastes the way it does — and the Best Sellers shelf shows which of these are actually moving.
