Of the recipes that I read, cherry brandy is the easiest by far — you macerate several pitted cherries in a jar for several days — and not alien at all to a con

Of the recipes that I read, cherry brandy is the easiest by far — you macerate several pitted cherries in a jar for several days — and not alien at all to a contemporary reader with an interest in these things. But should it have been quite so easy? 'Brandy' is almost as general a term as 'wine' or 'beer'. Which brandy available to an American in 2014 would be most comparable to the brandy available to an English cook in 1601, I wonder?