Jas Hennessy & Co., commonly known simply as Hennessy (), is a French producer of cognac, which has its headquarters in Cognac, France. It is one of the "big four" cognac houses, along with Martell, Courvoisier, and Rémy Martin, who together make around 85% of the world's cognac. Hennessy sells approximately 70 million bottles of its cognacs per year, making it the world's largest cognac producer, and in 2017 its sales represented around 60% of the US cognac market. As well as distilling cognac eaux-de-vie itself, the company also acts as a negociant. The brand is owned by Moët Hennessy, which is in turn owned by LVMH (66%) and Diageo (34%), who act as a non-controlling shareholder. Hennessy pioneered several industry-standard practices in the world of cognac, and its association with luxury has made it a regular point of reference in popular culture, especially in hip hop. History The Hennessy cognac distillery was founded by Irish Jacobite military officer Richard Hennessy in 1765, who had served in the army of Louis XV. He retired to the Cognac region, and began distilling and exporting brandies, first to the United Kingdom and his native Ireland, closely followed by the United States. In 1813 Richard Hennessy's son James Hennessy gave the company its trading name, Jas Hennessy & Co. 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 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. By 1860, it represented one out of every four bottles of cognac sold internationally. 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. It was also the first cognac house to use star ratings, and the gradings V.S.O.P. and XO, which are today used by most other cognac producers. The V.S.O.P. designation was first applied in 1817, when the Prince Regent (later King George IV) of Britain asked Hennessy to create a "very superior old pale" cognac, a description that had previously been applied to sherries. Maurice Hennessy, the grandson of Richard Hennessy, then introduced a