Cooking Brandy? - no!! Moral of the Story?

I bought some cheap brandy to soak the fruit in my Christmas Cakes before baking.  I usually get Sainsburys Value French Brandy, and it has done very well.  This time I saw a cheaper bottle in Iceland so I bought that, and divided the fruit into four bowls in order to make four fruit cakes.  The fruit alone was more than £20, and my mother bought it with her old age pension.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I put the fruit in to soak.  I haven't been well so when I didn't smell the usual sharp brandy aroma, I thought it was just because of my health.  I baked the first cake and splashed it with brandy as it came out of the oven.  It didn't sizzle properly so I tasted it.



Looks like brandy.  Says "Napoleon Style" on the bottle.  Label says its 22% alcohol, and in fine print says it is a mix of premium spirits.  My mum, Michelle, Caelyn, Lisa, Nigel and I tasted it and agree its definitely not brandy.  It tasted watery with a horrible aftertaste.  It was awful.  I am furious at all that fruit wasted, all the money lost, all the effort for a disgusting outcome.  I'm really not happy.  I will have to buy more brandy, from Sainsburys this time - plus another £20 worth of fruit, plus eggs etc.  It is such a disappointment and I'm quite despondent.  If only I had scrutinised the label more carefully.

The moral of the story is:
Read the label when buying a new product as it might not be what you think it is.
Just because it looks like brandy and is on the shelf next to real brandy doesn't mean that it is really brandy.