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The ‘making the food’ and ‘handing it to you’ is the price of the good. A tip is for how well they do that service and the atmosphere and experience they provide in the exchange.
If you have counter service and don’t clean up the table after me, there isn’t much opportunity for you to have good enough service to warrant a tip.
Cognac is essentially distilled alcohol from grapes… think about using wine to make distilled alcohol. I’m not positive, but I think I t was originally a way monks thought they could preserve wine through distillation and reconstitute it back into wine at a later time, but turns out not to have worked like that. Once you boil off the alcohol and discard the mash, you don’t get the ‘wine’ part back.
It’s just a different base to ferment and distill into a hard spirit. Because it starts as a sweeter fruit than grains, like rye, wheat, or barley, it tends to have a sweeter flavor. It’s particularly nice as a warm drink in the winter, but a bit sweeter than bourbon.