It doesn’t pay to drink bargain Armagnac. You can get an inexpensive bourbon that has been in the barrel for little more than four years and is perfectly drinkable. Tequila doesn’t even have to reach its third birthday to be considered well aged. And, of course, vodka is ready for bottling the day it comes off the column still. But Armagnac is made for aging. The French brandy from Gascony, cousin of cognac, is barely getting started when it has been in oak for four years. Armagnac is scarce-ish in the States. Indeed, unless you have a first-rate liquor store, chances are there won’t be much more of the French country brandy than a dusty bottle or two carelessly placed with unrelated liquors, like library books lost for years because they were misshelved.
Making it even harder to find what little Armagnac might be hiding at the shop around the corner, the stuff comes in simple bottles with brand names that have never been advertised in the U.S. There are no gaudy crystal containers emblazoned Remy Martin to jump off the shelf and into your basket. Cognac isn’t embarrassed about being flashy — witness the hideous Hennessy cognac bottle designed by starchitect Frank Gehry in 2020. Armagnac wouldn’t be caught dead in such a garish piece of glass.
Why do so few of us develop a taste for Armagnac, even those lucky enough to backpack around France some college summer? Because we tend to be introduced to the stuff, if at all, with a glass or two of a young V.S.-designated Gascon brandy — that is, a spirit that may not have been aged in the wood for any longer than a couple of years. Producers of cognac provide a better entry-level brandy than they are absolutely required to on the expectation that it will be the first thing a drinker new to cognac is likely to be exposed to. Makers of Armagnac occasionally do the same, but I have found it is their V.S.O.P. expressions that are more likely to be made with spirits aged longer than the regulations require. The regulations, it’s worth noting, have been changing, putting a higher priority on aging.
I recently blind-tasted three different Armagnacs from an excellent wine and liquor store in my Washington neighborhood. It’s a measure of their savvy that they have not one or two but a half-dozen shelves devoted to Armagnacs of various ages. I purchased a V.S. from Labiette Castille, a midrange bottling from one of the best producers in the region, Chateau de Lacquy, and a 25-year-old expression from makers Delord. Even though the Labiette Castille V.S. is made, generously, with brandy that has been in the barrel for three to five years, it was obvious from the first sip that this was a young, if not immature brandy. It isn’t that it is badly made, just that Armagnac needs a few more years in oak to be worth drinking. The 25-year-old Delord by contrast was rich and smooth on the tongue with a finish long enough to reach the horizon. No surprise there.
The real question was how the moderately priced “Reference” bottling would perform. It wasn’t as molasses-sweet as the 25-year-old, but it had the sweetness of dried fruit, without being heavy. The experiment confirmed my policy of avoiding young Armagnacs. But once beyond the immature V.S. options, there are fine intermediate brandies that give the extra-aged bottlings a run for their money.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
