Cognac Heir Cyril Camus on Hunting Boar With a Knife, Calls Incredible Hulk "A Bit Redundant"

Cyril Camus, dashing Cognac heir

If Cyril Camus had not been the heir to the fifth-largest cognac house in the world -- and the largest to be family-owned and -operated -- Camus Cognac would have had to pull him from soot-faced Dickensian obscurity and put him in charge anyway.

He has the longish hair and perma-stubble of the rakes who ruin maidens in five-part miniseries. He stands somewhere between six-foot-three and the moon, speaks more languages than you can name (assuming you can name only five or six languages), and says things like "The main purpose of cognac is to facilitate the great moments in a person's life" without sounding like he memorized one of his advertising brochures.

Camus needn't mention yachts and jaunts to China before you begin recalling all of your personal failures and kicking yourself for not drinking cognac just prior to each of your bad decisions.

Until three years ago, the France-based Camus Cognac did not have a presence in the United States, despite the U.S. having only ceded its spot as the largest consumer of cognac to China last year. This summer, Camus has introduced a new line of what he calls "expressions," but the slack-jawed among us might yawningly call "types" or "flavors" of cognac. He has chosen South Florida as his entry point, basing his import company out of West Palm Beach and working to get his bottles into the best bars and restaurants in Miami.

He also sat down with us at New Times HQ, and we happily moved our noontime cocktail to late morning to chat with him and try the new line. Below, enjoy some highlights from our conversation, including plenty of details about his jet-set life, his family's tradition of hunting wild boar with only knives, and what he thinks of the Thug Passion.