Category: France

This was the last of 12 armagnac houses I visited and we certainly saved the largest until the end. Domaine Du Tariquet is a gargantuan operation in the Bas Armagnac, but they mostly make table wine. 

We walked all around this property, up on top of huge wine tanks (I'm scared of heights but I do it for you, dear reader), to a super modern bottling line, and then to the completely incongruously ridiculously small room in the middle of it all, where the single wood-fired armagnac still is slowly churning out eau de vie. 

The family owns 900 hectares of land for both table wine and armagnac. They grow and distill the usual Ugni Blanc, Baco, and Folle Blanche (no Colombard as far as I know), but also Plant de Graisse. This grape varietal is one of ten allowed for armagnac, but this is the first place I heard of that actually used any but the top four. They say they began planting these when the future of Baco was uncertain (at one point they were going to have to get rid of all Baco vines because it's a hybrid). 

For their armagnac they use only free-run juice and allow a long skin contact maceration before fermentation. For 4-5 days it sits on lees  in temperature-controlled tanks. The distillation is also slow and takes 3-4 weeks. At the end of fermentation they try to distill the wine for armagnac as quickly as possible.

As is typical for armagnac, they distill on "light lees." As mentioned, their still is wood-fired, which seems pretty crazy given all the technology they're surrounded by. They have to add wood to the fire every 20 minutes or so. (They are purchasing an additional still soon, but I'm not sure where they'll put it.)

The still is a mobile armagnac continuous still, but it stays in place in the small room where it lives. During the distillation season, they run the still 24 hours but stop once each week to clean it. 

They distill up to 55% ABV. 

They have between four and five thousand barrels aging.

For dilution, they use the 'petite des eaux, which is a mix of water  fortified with brandy to prevent spoilage at 19% ABV in their case. The water ages in barrels alongside the armagnac barrels it will dilute. 

All their varietals are distilled and aged separately, not blended in the barrel. We visited an aging warehouse located at another family-owned property, a castle where our host Remy Grassa's father lives when he's in town (as one does). Most of their barrels are not made of local Gascony oak. 

Before bottling they chill filter to -8 degrees Celsius and run it through a cellulose pad.

Unlike many brands of armagnac, they do not specialize in vintages, only releasing three or four of them every 10 years.  

Tariquet is the brand of armagnac I see most often mixed into cocktails in San Francisco. Here are some probably-useless notes on stuff we tasted:

• Folle Blanche 8 year: 50.5% herbaceous, minty, sticks
• Folle Blanche 12 year old: 48.2% Mellower minty version of the 8
• Folle Blanche 15 year old: 47.2% Creamed spinach and mint, my favorite of these three
• 1995 vintage: 45.8% (60% Ugni Blanc, 40% Baco) Minty, herbaceous, singular, deep long finish, fresh and Doubleminty
• 1993 Vintage: 45.2% (60% Ugni Blanc, 40% Baco) Creamy French Oak, light
• 100th Anniversary Blend: 53.5% uses all four grape varietals. Nice mix of mint, rancio, wood, "narrow pepper", a touch smoky. Interesting/complex/fun. And of course, no longer available. 

Armagnac Gelas produces some unique armagnacs: in addition to the standard blends and vintage bottlings, they also produce single-varietal bottlings (and were the first brand to do so back in the 1950s) and armagnacs with barrel finishes. 

Our host for the visit was Philippe Gelas, a descendant of the brand founder. Like many armagnac houses, they do not own vineyards (actually his brother does, but they buy it from him) and do not distill themselves, but purchase eau de vie and age and blend it. 

Philippe says that different grapes used in armagnac grow best in different soils:

• Ugni Blanc and Colombard grow better in chalky/clay soils
• Folle Blanche and Baco grow better in sandy soils

Gelas has only been using Colombard for the past five years. It's not ready to be launched in their single-varietal line yet however. 

They purchase from four suppliers, one of which is Philippe's brother. Though they don't distill, the warehouse (as usual, tucked around the corner from the office building) has a square column still on display that was built by Philippe's grandfather. He says it was built specifically to reduce the heady heaviness in distillation of armagnac. 

When having wine distilled, they distill Ugni Blanc and Colombard to 60% ABV, and Baco and Folle Blanche lower to 54-56%. Philippe says you get more finesse out of Ugni Blanc this way. 

Unlike many producers who call for a heavy toast, they have their barrels prepared with a medium toast. 

We then popped to the tasting area – a little corner of a souvenir shop- and tasted a ton of armagnac. Here are some quick and probably useless notes:

• Seleccion – a young Ugni Blanc/Baco blend meant for cocktails. Philippe told us this one (only) has a tiny bit of sugar added to it. None of the others have any added sugar or color. 
• 8 Year –  Ugni Blanc/Baco blend 40% ABV. I liked this one better for cocktails; it could substitute for aged rum quite nicely
• 18 year Folle Blanche – 44.8% Spicy, thinnish, grapey
• 25 year Ugnic Blanc – 48.8% Delicious, rancio, peppery jalapeno
• 50 year Baco – 40% Smells like bread and butter, tastes dry and woody with mushrooms
• 11 year armagnac finished for 1 year in Lustao Oloroso sherry barrel – 54% ABV surprising and sweet
• 18 year armagnac finished in a port barrel – interesting ginger spice comes in
• 1943 vintage – Delicious rootbeer spice

Armagnac Delord is located at the edge of the town of Lannepax in the Bas Armagnac region. They took us up a vineyard-covered hill for a view looking down upon the town. 

I visited the property in November of 2014, but unlike many of the other armagnac houses they were not planning to begin distilling for the season until January 5th. Their plan was to distill for 5 weeks. 

They make two brands: Delord and Marie Duffau. Though they do make some traditional products like prunes in wine and floc de gascone (the armagnac version of pinneau des charantes), they do not make any table wine. 

Delord owns 42 hectares in 5 parcels around the village. They grow four grapes:

• 56% Ugni Blanc
• 13% Baco
• 24% Colombard
• 7% Folle Blanche

They are moving away from Colombard, however, toward Baco. (On my visit moving away from Colombard seemed to be happening at a few houses.)

Delord is one of three armagnac houses (along with Janneau and Samalens) that uses pot stills for the armagnac, along with the traditional armagnac continuous still. About 20% of Delord's wine is double-distilled. 

Double pot distilled eau de vie at Delord is used in:

• Their blanche de armagnac (not aged in barrels)
• Part of the Delord VS bottling
• Part of the Marie Duffau Napoleon bottling

Their pot stills take about 8 hours per distillation, and they distill the wine up to 70% ABV, which is pretty standard, and put it into barrels at a reduced 65%. 

One of their continuous armagnac stills dates back to 1900. Their armagnac stills have plates inside, as is normal. They prefer to use the spider-shaped plates as they say they get more mixing between the gas vapor and the liquid wine with them. 

The old still from 1900 distills up to about 58% ABV, while the newer one goes up to 60-62% after the single distillation. They mix the distillates from these two stills together and put it into barrels at 55% ABV. 

Aging brandy is aerated at the same rate whether the brandy came from a pot or column still, but they say they have to dilute the armagnac column still brandy more slowly than the stuff from the pot still. 

They have 4 aging cellars; three of them crammed around the office building on the edge of town. 

Unlike most of the armagnac houses I visited, they use just 10% local Gascony oak to age their brandy, the majority of it being Limousin oak. They give it a high toast. While aging they have about a 2% angels' share. 

Last year they sold 200,000 bottles, 80% of them blends and the rest vintages. 

We had time to create the wax seal for the bottle. Bam! I should get hired doing that, as long as you can drink on the job. 

Armagnac Dartigalongue also claims to be the oldest brand of armagnac in Bas Armagnac as does their nearby neighbor Casterede. They're a rather large brand, exporting about 60% of the 50,000 bottles they produce annually. They also make the brand Croix De Salles.

Dartigalongue does not own their own vineyards nor distill their own brandy, but has long-term contracts with their four winegrowers in Bas Armagnac and their distillers. They use the famous mobile distillers, which I assume distill on site at the wineries rather than here where where it's all about aging. 

Of the big four grape varietals (baco, ugni blanc, folle blanche, and colombard) they only don't use the last one. 

Their wine is distilled by the roving distillers to 60% ABV. 

They typically use only barrels made of local Gascony oak but now are experimenting with several other barrels – we saw a small part of the warehouse with the same eau de vie aging in four different barrels as a test. They are also testing steam-assembled barrels, which I believe is the faster, more modern way to bend barrel staves in bigger cooperages. 

In armagnac, producers typically reduce with water and aerate the aging brandy on a regular basis, and everyplace seems to do it a little bit differently. Here at Dartigalongue, every two years they aerate the brandy for half a day and reduce it by 2% ABV for the first 10 years. They say this created the special taste of that brand. After ten years, they only reduce the armagnac every 5-7 years or so. 

Our host Benoît Hillion said that if they didn't aerate armagnac, it would be tougher and less ethereal, less open, more aggressive, and have a shorter finish. 

The Dartigalongue house is at street level at the edge of a small old town, and as it typical in armagnac that house is stuffed full of flammable liquid: We walked upstairs from the office to find their dry cellar, then down into the basement to find their cool, humid cellar. 

Hillion described the house style as "aromatic but not without agressivity; spicenss of course, and a long aftertaste." I often found the house style to be spicy-minty and not as green and mushroomy as other armagnacs. The 1975 vintage I thought tasted of tarragon, while a 1955 vintage was creamy, sandy, and spicy. 

After the tasting we walked across the street to another small building we own. Downstairs was a museum of sorts, with lots of vintage armagnac paraphernalia including racy/misogynist menu ads from long ago, and cruise ship wine lists and very old demijohns of armagnac upstairs. 

I had the chance to visit the Chateau Castarede, a 17th Century estate/castle in the Bas Armagnac region where they produce armagnac. Florence Castarède was our host for the day. She says they're the oldest armagnac brand, but so too does Dartigalongue.

They make three armagnac labels: 

• Armagnac Castarède
• Château de Maniban
• Nismes Delclou

They grow the grapes for their products, primarily Ugni Blanc and Colombard grapes. The region has the sandy soils full of fossils and shells of the former ocean floor. 

They have two stills; one gas-powered, one wood-fueled. 

While we were there, the cellarmaster was doing the annual inspection of the barrels of aging armagnac, tasting each one and noting whether or not it needed to be aerated. 

Our brief visit there involved mostly a tour around the castle and then lots of time in their newest barrel room, where we spent a long time drinking barrels from our birth years. The older I get, the harder that is to find.