(1724–1800) founded the distillery in 1765 The Hennessy cognac
distillery was founded by Irish
Jacobite military officer
Richard Hennessy in 1765, who had served in the army of
King Louis XV. The Hennessy family's seat was
Killavullen near
Mallow, and was closely related in
County Cork to the
Nagle,
Burke and
Roche families. He retired to the
commune of
Cognac, and began distilling and exporting brandies, first to Britain and his native Ireland, closely followed by the United States. He was also responsible for choosing Jean Fillioux as the house's Master Blender. A member of the Fillioux family has occupied the role ever since, a business relationship that has lasted eight generations and more than 250 years. Hennessy became the world's leading exporter of brandy in the 1840s, a status it has never lost. Hennessy also instituted several of the conventions now used across the cognac industry. It was one of the first marques to sell bottles rather than casks of cognac, a process that helped it survive the
Great French Wine Blight in the mid-nineteenth century. Maurice Hennessy, the grandson of Richard Hennessy, then introduced a star-based classification of cognac qualities in 1865 (a system simultaneously adopted by Hennessy's competitor
Martell), which remained the industry standard of cognac age designation until the 1960s. Kilian Hennessy had intended to be a banker, but instead went on to position Hennessy as an international brand, travelling to Ireland, the United States and Asia to promote the brand. In 1947, Hennessy's business relationship with Martell also came to a close, after the death of Maurice Firino-Martell. Hennessy has also become a key part of major luxury
conglomerates. In 1971 Kilian Hennessy spearheaded the company's merger with
Moët & Chandon, to create
Moët Hennessy which eventually went public and thrived financially. Moët Hennessy then announced a merger with
Louis Vuitton, which already owned champagne brands, in 1987, creating the world's largest
luxury brand conglomerate,
LVMH. In 1988, a management crisis led to the group's takeover by
Bernard Arnault, owner of the
haute couture house
Dior, with the support of the
Guinness brewery group. The so-called "LVMH affair" was so controversial in France that French president
François Mitterrand referenced it in a televised address. From 2018 onward, Hennessy experienced production shortages caused in part by increased demand, bottle shortages, and frosts. ==Marketing==