Hey, you're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I am Pat, Spirits Guy at Binny's. Joined today, in the room, but distanced. Far away. Far away, yeah. As far away as we can be, at least. The length of a microphone cable. Yeah, that's pretty far. Cables have varying lengths as well, right? All right, cool. Well, so we're actually in the room together because we're gonna taste some really cool stuff today. We wanted to talk about Armagnac today. Armagnac is a underappreciated spirits category. So we brought in a Musketeer Day Armagnac. Is that how I say that, Brett? Yes, I believe so. Yes. So Brett is here today. It's a good thing there's no camera. I don't have my sash. Yeah, you don't have your sash and your medal on. Brett is a Knight of Armagnac, a Musketeer of Armagnac for his tireless efforts promoting the spirit in the United States of America. Grown man has a sash. You know what? And he wears it with pride. It's 2020. Lighten up. It's 2021. It is 2021. The most upsetting part about getting the sash, I got a sash and a beret and they refused to give me a sword because I figured if I'm going to be a Musketeer, I need a sword. That's bull****. I would have walked out. They were like, you're flying home, right? He also threatened to not go to the ceremony because the Blackhawks were in the playoffs as well. No, no, no. I threatened to not go to the ceremony. I told them the only reason I went to the ceremony to be knighted as a Musketeer was because the Blackhawks clinched game six in 2010 to win their first Stanley Cup at that point in time, 37 years. There you go. All right. I'm Greg. Obviously Brett's on the show. And Alicia's in the room too. I'm here too. Hello. I'm here too. Well, that was a very whiskey hotline introduction to an episode. Hey, it's a whiskey hotline episode. So we're talking about Armagnac and Brett happens to be a Musketeer of Armagnac. Okay. Armagnac. I printed off outlines that we would normally do staff trainings with Armagnac with for you guys. Just some general points we want to hit today, you know. It's two pages front and back. Yeah. And there's a Spanish Brandy bit on the end too, because I taught it together with Spanish Brandy last time. So just ignore that part. Okay. We don't need to talk about it today. But really, you know that episode of Always Sunny with Country Mac? The listeners might appreciate this. But Armagnac is Cognac's country cousin. It's a little more, you know, earthy and bitey. It's also older. Armagnac has existed. Well before Armagnac. So it's just, it's an older, more rustic style of brandy from the gascony region, which is a pretty, you know, bucolic region of France. And would have been the first if you trace distillation, which at least in that part of the world would have started in Mesopotamia, in that area where they were distilling probably beer, right? And not, it was done by the Moors. We were Muslim, so they weren't doing it to drink. They were doing it as a base to carry fragrance, just like we started distilling corn in the United States as a way to ship corn, because it wouldn't keep. They did the same thing, and so when the Moors invaded southern Europe, they brought the distillation tradition, which is where all distillation started. And so you can make an argument that Armagnac would have been one of the first beverage spirits distilled as well. Cool. Because that was one of the first areas they would have gone through, and their fermentable material were grapes, so they distilled grapes. First thing, the important thing with Armagnac is the differentiating points between it and Cognac. So fundamentally, it is distilled in a different way. Armagnac is traditionally distilled one single time in a column still, whereas Cognac by law has to be double distilled in pot stills. Those pot stills have specific sizes they have to be limited to and yields and all that. Like Cognac and other brandies, it has a distilling season. You can't distill after, what, April 1st bread, I think, usually. Most producers will finish before that though. Also, most Armagnacs, it's not industrialized and giant like Cognac, where Cognac is this global behemoth that spells millions and millions and millions of cases all over the world. Armagnac is just a tiny little drop. A lot of these are produced at single family farms. For a long time, the tradition was a kind of roaming stillman in the distilling season, where a guy had, or a couple of guys, a team of stillman would have a still on a trailer, like a cart, a wagon, that they would tow behind a couple of horses, big Then you have your barrel of booze for the year? Yeah, and then the barrels were put down into the cellars of each farmhouse, and those families, and it was just their family, you know, Armagnac to, you know, sip on themselves, trade as they saw fit, you know? They might have traded it for livestock or something at some point, but... I love that. That actually exists in wine a little bit today. These custom-crush facilities, and while they're not, you know, roaming around, small producers can bring their grapes to them, Woodinville, Washington being one that comes to mind, and make their wine there, and then they take it home or sell it to That's really cool. And the rules you're describing really feel like they were designed around, like, technology 800 years ago because you don't distill after a certain date because it gets hot. Well, and the wine goes bad, too. So that's, I think, the bigger thing is that after you make the wine, before the wine oxidizes and goes stale and goes bad, it has to be distilled. And this isn't normal wine. Like, all grape distillate is made from wines that aren't really considered, you know, drinking wine. It's high acid, low sugar wines make the most flavorful distillate. We don't have too many colombards on ourselves. No, not at all. Yeah. It's like the ditch vine. So what's the one? Ugni Blanc in France. Isn't that related to colombard? Yeah. That's actually what we're tasting today too. It's Trebbiano. Trebbiano. Trebbiano. Yeah. Oh yeah. What's colombard then? Colombard is... Well, Folle Blanche is Pickpool. Yes. That I know. So that's the other connection. Well, another one in the... Now, Folle Blanche used to be all, practically all of the plantings in Cognac and Armagnac, but Folle Blanche was devastated by Phylloxera. And so that's when they got away and started using Ugni Blanc, which is much more resistant to various disease. And that's why... And baco as well. And to this day, it's still the main planting. So about 55% of all plantings in Armagnac are Ugni Blanc, followed by baco at 17%, or actually baco's third, but baco is 17%. Now, this statistics might be two years older, so. But baco, also known as baco 22A, is the only, to my knowledge, only hybrid grape varietal allowed in an AOC anywhere in the world. And that's a hybrid of Folle Blanche and Noah, which was a North American varietal. So, I would assume those got hybridized for phylloxera resistance. Yeah, they went ahead and used hybrids after phylloxera and then realized that these American species are just not turning out as pretty of wines and they didn't appreciate the character of them. So, they banned them, you're right, from a lot of the geographical locations within Europe and specifically the AOCs in France. So, interesting. Carp before the horse, but so was that the genesis of the rootstock coming or did they bring the rootstock to then graft the European varietals on top of because the solution to floxure ultimately was American rootstock, which was resistant with Correct. I believe that the rejection of hybrids is what prompted them to graft on American rootstock and keep. Since we're talking about great varietals, this is a good place to start with Armagnac. I'm passing around bottles from Artez. Artez makes these single varietal Armagnacs. So this is, I think, one of the few really cool and accessible educational pieces to the general consumer for distilled spirits. Like, you don't see often from the same distillery at the same age, single grain whiskeys. You don't like, it's not like Buffalo Trace just makes 100% wheat, 100% rye and 100% corn whiskey and ages them exactly the same and bottles them together. So you can taste these things and smell these things side by side. This is pretty unique in the spirits world. So we have Artez, Ugni Blanc, baco and Folle Blanche, which again, Folle Blanche is one of the hybrids of rye, in one of the grapes in the hybrid of baco. These are all from the same distillery? Same distillery, roughly same age, all that. So just basically three Armagnacs, Armagnacs. Single-varietal Armagnacs. Treated the same way, three different varietals, three different grapes. If we talk about the crews, Barre Armagnac and Teneres, and they don't really have an whole Armagnac like they do in Cognac in Bordeaux, they tend to end up being for most producers no more than a couple of them combined. If you look at De Rose does a really good job of in their single vintages from all of their different producers breaking down the grape varietal that's used, and they're almost 90% of them are actually end up being single variety by default, but sort of like you don't talk too much about what's in Bordeaux. I mean it's either Bordeaux and it's from a commune and we know that there are four or five grapes that are involved, but you don't talk about the grapes. They sort of don't hear either. It's just like typical to France. We're varietal obsessed. Exactly. Of course, this is where my distillery is. Of course, I'm using baco or of course, I'm using. So, I mean, Ugni Blanche just has a great variety. It's very dry. It's very kind of mean, almost neutral in flavor, just lots of citrus, whereas Colombo are a little bit more expressive and kind of some honeydew and passion fruit, but both, as we mentioned, very high acid varieties. Yeah. I mean, the high acid is necessary for distillation because it's high acid wines are going to produce the highest aroma distillate. So once, if you have a low acid wine, by the time you distill it, you really don't have much left and you need those, that high acidity to carry esters through distillation. Yeah, you'll get alcohol, but you won't get a lot of character with the alcohol. So then like a more neutral wine grape makes a more barrel-friendly base for an Armagnac. A more flavorful base, yeah, for sure. And even if you use our varietals, like a lot of California producers, because you don't have a lot, you have some Cullombard maybe, you don't have Folle Blanche in the United States, don't really have much of a new Blanch, that all grown, so you end up using stuff like, they use Pinot Noir and Vignette a lot, when you do brandies in the United States. And even then, they have to change the way they grow the fruit and when they harvest, to make sure they have that acidity. Yeah, especially with Vignette, I mean they have to pick that really early to get acidity. They do and they have to be very careful, just like with making the wine, they have to be very careful about how they press, to make sure they don't get too much of the skin, because then it gets super phenolic, and they tend to get things that are So we have these three varietals in front of us. I don't know Pat, the baco seems a little more neutral on the nose than the Ugni Blanche does to me. I agree, and I think it's a little sharper on the palate too. And then the Folle Blanche really has the most aromatic character. It's big. Folle Blanche I think shows the most of as like a fruit bouquet, I suppose. I mean it has this ripe and dried fruit mix going on. You have like orange peel, but then like plum and raisin at the same time, and brown sugar. Yeah, but catch the palate on the baco. I mean that's the whole, it doesn't, there's not. It's one of those things where you kind of have to smell and taste, and if you eject it out of hand just because of the nose, that is really meaty and fat on the palate. I think the baco is like blind tasty, and I would guess the baco is an Armagnac, because Brett said meaty and fat, and that is one of what I would consider a calling card for Armagnac. I mean Armagnac tends to be earthier and spicier for an Odovie, but it also is like big and burly and meaty. Oily. And they show, and we'll get to it, but their aging is a bit different than Cognac in the process they go through, both as they're transferring to barrels, and just the whole regimen they used around aging is completely different from Cognac, which means that you also get a lot more wood character and wood spice in Armagnac. So you would need to have a less delicate, more hardy distillate to start with because of the way you're going to age, because the aging is going to be more aggressive. I'm sure this has something to do with the soil, but a couple of the major crews in Cognac, Grand Champagne, Petite Champagne for sure, they produce very delicate eau de vie. That's very delicate and floral, and it takes a very long time to reach optimal maturity. And if you taste those eaux de vie when they're like 12 years old, they taste notably immature, whereas a Bordere Cognac at 12 years old tastes like a Grand Champagne does at 20 years old, for example. So that probably has something to do with this here, where these grapes are grown and they hold up to that kind of wood treatment that Brett was talking about, I think, better than a Cognac would, because they're just bigger and fatter and fuller. Because those delicate wines would get overwhelmed. It's sort of like you could almost equate it to the difference between putting a malt distillate in fresh oak versus putting corn distillate or rye distillate in fresh oak. There's a reason why, a lot of reasons, but one of the main reasons why you don't see a lot of malt going to fresh wood is that fresh wood just kills it, because it's so much more delicate and delicate. Very delicate compared to corn. Corn is big and oily and sweet. So the stylistic difference as well between Armagnac and Cognac, and if Armagnac was kind of doing this first, is Cognac's expression and their double pot distillate a response to Armagnac to create something different or? You know, I'm not sure on that. I think that if you looked at the history, it was, you know, Armagnac was farmhouse distillation as Pat described earlier, and Cognac was distillation. One, it was really heavily driven by British, and it was driven by a lot of the commercial trade because it's much closer to Bordeaux. So it was driven much more by the commercial trade in wine. And where was a lot of the wine commercially that was coming out of France, at least initially, as it was leaving France, the first place it went generally was England. And so there's a huge, huge amount of English background on the Cognac side. And I think it was just, it was that. It was more volume in Cognac. And it was meant to be a little bit friendlier altogether, which is why they tried to make it a lot more delicate. You know, and we were talking about its, you know, meatier texture. And a big part of that is the type of still they use. And, you know, they use these Armagnace stills that have, you know, the big rectifying neck to them that have rectifying plates in them. But because it's passed once through that, a higher amount of heavier compounds are left in the distillate itself. And so those like heavier, sometimes harsher elements, that, you know, those aren't alcohol, but they're left in the liquid. And they take a while to smooth out and round out in maturation. Yeah, they're there. And if you look at it, it's a more rudimentary, despite the fact it has a column, as Pat said, it ends up being more rustic, because they also do it for efficiency because it's based off the original Alembic still, which is about as simple as you get. I mean, that's truly an Alembic is kind of like a- Like what you would buy to make essential oils on your stovetop. I mean, it's- It's a pot with a swan neck. Pot with a swan neck. Do you make essential oils on your stovetop a lot, Pat? Maybe. Do you put them on your feet so you sleep better? It's very rudimentary still, and it's kind of efficient. It would be some of the first sort of energy saving, because if you look at it, it's basically you have to get the wine warmed up before you go into. You don't put mash in ice cold, because you lose energy trying to warm it up with the heat. It just takes a lot longer to distill. So basically the cold wine passes through the condenser, and it does two things. It gets warmed up by being close to the vapor that's coming off the still. And it cools the vapor and condenses the vapor. So then it goes into, and you basically have a pot of water that's in the bottom that has steam. And so you're introducing this wine as falling and hitting, basically going down and hitting the heat. And you control, they have to, and again, they didn't have temperature gauges and then thermometers. And these were wood-fired still. And wood-fired still. So but they had to control and get the heat just right. So as the things are going, they're burning off the correct amount of alcohol. And because if you get too hot, you start to get really fat, oily elements you don't want. If you get too, if you don't get your temperature hot enough, you would have nothing but some precursor to methanol and then sort of a seal out. Thin watery distillate. Thin watery distillate at the top. And so they have to control the temperature. So they're using it, they're warming up. The cold wine is getting warmed up as it's passing by the condensation. It drops in, they control the temperature to get the right condensate to come out. Then when it goes through the condensers, they usually have a break off where as it's coming and getting condensed, some of it's going to run back in and get redistilled. So even though it's considered single distillation, it's not completely single distillation. Some part of the distillate will pass through. Some part of the distillation, there's reflux. They add in some reflux where they draw a little bit of what should be the final distillate and toss it back in and purify it, clean it up again. That's still not going to protect you from heads and tails. You have to be pretty careful. You do have to. Just like everything else, they tend to have less of a methanol problem with grape distillate than you do with grain distillate and certainly than you do with agave distillate. That has a lot to do with the... Agave has a lot to do with the skins. Same thing with husks and grains. The wine that they use to make this brandy, do they vinify it in neutral containers, big wood, glass, concrete? What do you think? Does it matter? Wood, generally, just because that's what they have. Yeah. Just the big leftover brass. And a lot of times, spontaneous fermentation. Does DeLorde have steel tanks that they vinify in now, maybe? DeLorde does now just out of efficiency because of the amount they produce. So the bigger producers do. But I've been to Artez as well, and Artez does not. Artez has got wood tanks. Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, that's pretty impressive that they're still vinifying in wood, too. Right. I would think stainless steel for sure, just to maintain the purity of the grape. Cognac is certainly stainless steel. What other distillate can you think of that gets barrel aging before distillation? Well, I mean, most bourbon and rye. I mean, not most, but there's plenty of wooden washbacks in scotland. I mean, that's the traditional thing in scotland is it's fermented in wood. But that's fermented usually in larch or Douglas fir, and it's pretty neutral. They're giant neutral tanks. And they would tell you basically that the people that install stainless steel will tell you that there's no difference except stainless steel is more efficient, it lasts longer, and it's easier to clean. The people that are distilling in larch, of course, would say that it makes a huge difference. I mean, we talked to a distillery manager at an unnamed very, very large scotch distillery maybe four years ago, and they're in the process of big expansion, like a lot of places in the single malt scotch, and all of their new washbacks are stainless steel, and the old ones were I think theirs were, he said, Oregon pine. The scots called Douglas fir Oregon pine, which Douglas fir, oddly enough, is not a species of pine. It's also not a species of fir. It's not technically a fir. We can get it in the conifers later. Is it a U? No, it's its own thing. Its scientific name is Pseudosuga. Pseudosuga is fir, so it's a pseudo fir. Pat, the coniferous king. Farber and I got really into this one time in scotland. Either way, so of course, the first thing we asked this guy was, is that going to change the character of Disolate? And he goes, well, of course, we'll tell you absolutely not, but off the record, I'll tell you, how could it not? The issue with the wood is less that the wood itself is getting to impart something, it's that the wood is harder to clean, which means that there's all kinds of things living in it, that you just can't completely get rid of. And it's just, I mean, that's manpower and downtime cleaning tanks and stuff, when you could just be pumping juice through. So, my favorite of the first bunch here was the Folle Blanche. Yeah, mine too. I think the Folle Blanche is just, I don't know, it's round and rich. It's balanced. I like the baco. Yeah. I liked them mixed together, honestly. I think that kind of... Greg, are you going to defend Ugni Blanche, or is poor Ugni Blanche just left to rot? Ugni Blanche can just go screw, I guess. Because, no, the Folle Blanche is where it's at, out of those. But yeah, it's not about single varieties, right? Like almost everything from Armagnac is a blend. Well, yeah. I mean, it's a blend of what's available sometimes, that in a single year, that might only be one single varietal. But more importantly, it's just varietal isn't part of the story for them. It's just like, why would you talk about varietal? This is, we made this brandy and then we aged it. And in aging it and how we aged it and what we aged it in is where it developed its character, not whatever high acid, low sugar wine it started out as. They want vital hearty fruit. They want vital hearty grapes that will maximize alcohol output with good flavor. I mentioned earlier these different crews in Cognac. There are three different crews or I guess Appalachians in Armagnac as well. There's Bas Armagnac, Teneres and then there is Hote Armagnac as well. So the difference is the terroir where the grapes are grown, the soil type. So the big thing is like Teneres has this a lot of limestone soils and they make a harsher but full flavored distillate but it takes a long time to age. Whereas Bas Armagnac is just more like sandy soil and it makes this nice fat distillate that ages a reasonable amount of time and it's ready to go. That is so weird. What's interesting to me is that we're saying that the grape variety doesn't really matter but yet the soil type does. Right. And all these scientists say that the minerals in the soil don't actually get into the grape. You don't find those minerals in the grape before they make the wine but somehow the characters of the soil impact. Come on. It has to affect the way the soil grows. You know what it is? It's like highland and lowland agaves to bring up agave again but agaves naturally grow in lower elevations and when you put them in these higher elevations where there's real red soil like a lot of iron in the soil, it was described to me from a tequila maker once is that soil is like inherently bad and poisonous to those agaves. So in order for them to grow, they have to they like go into supercharged mode producing as much sugar as they can to like just try to survive and fend off this Yeah, I mean I think despite, you're right Greg in that a lot of scientists have said that we can't prove the link here but ask any winemaker they're going to say it's there like there is a transfer if you will of something from these unique soils Grapes don't matter, mix it up in a big bucket, distill it, age it in wood and then the thing you're talking about is the soil type at the very beginning of the process. Well, I mean that's what I'm talking about. I don't know how much Jérôme Delord talks about soil type when he's talking about Delord Army. Well interestingly enough Delord and I was just digging through to try to, Pellahote will be the big one that we'll have from Teneres and Laris single which is not in Illinois is in some other states. We used to have Laris single as a Teneres producer but Delord actually does Teneres so Delord is obviously sourcing fruit from the Teneres even though most of what they're doing is label baco Armagnac. Yeah they're doing things from Teneres and so and labeling them and then Liberta Leave was a producer that is no longer available used to be really expensive and Domaine de la Post specifically from De Roos. Yeah we have De Roos de la Post for sure. You see De La Post that's all Teneres. The soil types are kind of consistent with how you would say they affect wine in terms of baco Armagnac is mostly sandy and we're saying that it produces this kind of smooth O2V. Sandy soils tends to produce kind of more aromatic, lighter wines whereas clay great for water retention, robust, big fuller wines. Right. It reads like as you would expect. Yeah. It's just so weird. Yeah. I mean on one hand scientists are saying that's nothing and on the other hand we have consistent experience that shows us the effects of these things. But that's related to actual like proven drainage and so forth. But the mineral content is disputed part. Just because we're talking about how the soil has quarts and quartzy soils make wine taste like this, they can do that without quarts showing up in the wine. Just because you can't find the minerals in the wine, doesn't mean it's not affecting the wine. Right. I don't mean to draw a conversation in that direction. Well, it's interesting what we should do is to tell you because now that we're, I mean, I think that soil structure has a lot more to do with it than we're probably giving you credit. Right. This is a draw's list and the only thing that they have that they're sourcing, that they list specifically as tenor as is Domain Dealers Post. They do, however, make sure to break down what they're doing vintage after vintage with varietal. And they only have a few that are 100 percent single varietal. And the young ones are all baco. You don't get into other varietals until you get to a Domain Dealer Post from tenor as from 1987. 1987 is the youngest that they have as another single varietal, which is Ugni Blanche. Yeah, because tenor as takes a very long time to mature. You know, a 2012 from tenor as would not take so long. So Domain Dealer Post is 100 percent Ugni Blanche. Do they label the all baco one as baco or the all Ugni Blanche one as Ugni Blanche? I believe so. We will have to go down to Kremel Label, but I believe they do. How common are vintage expressions in Armagnac? Incredibly common. Well, there is. Yeah, something else. Then that's a big difference between them and Cognac as well. Yes, we can talk all day about the nuances of these different soil types. But at the end of the day, the other big thing that's obviously affecting how these taste is how they're aged, right? And most commonly, these are aged in pretty large barrels, around 400 to 430 liters. I mean, pretty big barrels. We are actually... Wait a minute. You said liters. I'm used to hearing like 250 gallons. 250 gallons is massive. That's too big to age anything legally. How big is a bourbon barrel? 50 gallons? 53 gallons. 53 gallons. So 220 liters. Put your wine hat on, Greg. Yeah. So 220, 225 liters or whatever. A scotch hog's hat is about 250 liters. So I mean, you're talking... About double the size of a... A brieck is 300. So a typical wine barrel is closer to 300 liters, right? Yeah. A brieck is 225. But it's still not one of these fooders that you see in Belgium. No, no. I mean, that's the difference between a barrel and a tank. Like a fooder is a tank. Okay. You know, the best way to think about it is if you're talking about 400 liters, it's essentially twice the size of a bourbon barrel or twice the liquid content of a bourbon barrel. Bigger barrel means less wood per volume. So bigger barrel ironically means less wood influence over time. Yes. Yes. Okay. So once it's in barrel, how often are they tracking kind of the quality to know, is this going to be an exo or? So that part is interesting because that's where it deviates from what would be very typical aging for any other area to the best of my knowledge in one way than closer to cognac. So it goes into wood and it usually goes into newer wood. And then they put it in at the strength they come off the still, which could be in the low 50s, more like tequila and 50 to 55%. Yeah, not as high as whisky, usually in the low to mid 50s. Barrel strength to cognac producers and Armagnac producers, they're sort of like why? It doesn't taste good. It's foreign to them. So the way that they're going to do it, it goes into wood. And within the first year, generally, they'll take all of that vintage and they'll dump it all out in the tank and they'll aerate the distillate and they'll water it down a little bit. So it'll be 55 and then after a year it'll get aerated and watered down a little bit to like 52. Then it goes back into wood. Sometimes the same. Then they take that tank and then usually gets put into wood that has previously been used. Like it goes into new wood only usually for the first couple of years, maybe three years. But then pretty much every year, they're taking some distillate out and aerating it and watering it down and putting it back into wood. They're doing that. That's exactly it. Dartigalongue does it every year. Well, not every year for they do it like Dartigalongue, for instance, does it for five years and then they're done. But after five years, they cut the proof from the original barrel entry, which could have been 50 to 55 down somewhere more to 40 to 45, and that's where it's going to live the rest of its life. It's pretty much the same wood at that point in time, and they're not going to mess with it a whole bunch, which is why when we talk about vintage, they can do vintage, because they don't really mix these things together. Whatever you do in one year of distillation sort of stays in the same family and Armagnac, and they don't really blend younger wines and older wines together. The other thing they don't do, which they do in Cognac, is Cognac, they're constantly tasting, and they're constantly switching wood. So if they have something they feel is aging too quickly in Cognac, they'll dump that. They'll blend it maybe with younger Odovie, maybe not, and they'll also put it in spent wood or newer wood, depending upon how they want to manipulate the direction in which it's going. Okay, that's Armagnac and Cognac. Do you guys know of other, where else in the world do people tinker with the distillate once it's in barrel? Is that a thing? Canadian whiskey sometimes, but not really. But that's probably more for production efficiency than it is really to manipulate the flavor. I mean, they manipulate the distillate more on Canadian whiskey. In a way, it feels so intimate and like it's such a caring curation of the aging. It's a hands-on approach. And so with Cognac, I mean, that's a very hands-on approach with Cognac and it's old, and you're getting a mix of very old stuff and very young stuff. So Cognac tends to be pretty expensive. And it's the blender's art. I mean, there are two things that are completely foreign. If you want somebody to... In Cognac, you bring up two things, and one is barrel-proof or cast strength, and the other one is vintage or age, because it doesn't matter. It's like we make this to taste. Why would you want a single barrel or a single vintage? I mean, we can make something better if we blend. But that's also a result of the kind of business structure of Cognac, right? And that you have concentrations of like four to five big producers that are sourcing from a lot of small guys. They're big producers sourcing from hundreds and thousands of small guys. Right. So they have the resources to then say, oh, I'm going to blend across all these different years and... And it's consistency. And it's consistency. The big thing is it's consistency, 100%. They know, again, because they break out the region in Cognac, so they have an expectation about what the fruit from the different regions are going to taste like, what the longevity is going to be and what elements they need. So, you know, you're Grand Champagne, Petite Champagne, but you also, if you want to add some aromatic character, you put in Borderee, all right? You know, if you want to meat it up a little bit, maybe you put in Fenbois, you know, Bombois if you need bulk. So, I mean, yeah, so they're using, I mean, back to the barrels, I mean, it goes into new wood for a few years, and then it goes into used wood for a few years, and then it goes into neutral wood, where it just sits and mellows out. And as they're moving in between those woods, they're watering it down then, which I think is pretty cool, because if you water as it ages, you're not adding a bunch of water on the back end before bottling, so the whole process is maintaining this The water is getting barrel-aged, too. And the water is getting barrel-aged, too. Correct, which means you don't shock it for one and for two. You also don't get some pontification, which is a chemical occurrence which can happen if you water too quickly. Specifically with brandy. It's a big problem with brandy. With grape distillate, because it makes it taste soapy. What is that, like some kind of like a... It's when the shock is so great that the water and the alcohol don't bond and it causes certain elements of the alcohol that basically act as a surfacant. Like it causes a chemical reaction. It causes a chemical reaction and there are oils that basically just leave suspension and sit on the surface of the molecules. It's not as simple as saying, I have 50 gallons of this barrel proof brandy. I need to get it to 43% alcohol. So I need five gallons of water. You can't just dump five gallons of water in and then call it a day. If you do that, that's when you get some pontification. So it has to be watered down very slowly with brandy. And with certain, like if you're making an Amaro out of a, you know, grape based distillate, you kind of have to water that down the same way. It's like when you make mayonnaise, if you add the oil too fast to the eggs, just won't work. Just won't work. I'm going to have to trust you on that, Simile. Now, the oak that they age in, traditionally they, you know, they took oak from the Manzaloon forest, which is now doesn't exactly have the oak stands required for such cupridge production. So most of it comes from the Limousine forest now, which is a forest that also supplies cognac. They grow very pedunculate oak in Limousine, but that's really just kind of like the picturesque storybook oak tree, this sprawling, wide, big, straight, horizontal branches oak tree, nothing thin and easy. These big wide oaks may have a very wide grain. They have very high tannin. Wider grain oak has higher tannin. It's that pretty typical spicy French oak that you think of. Can we try the next one? Yeah, let's try them. So I passed around two here, and we have of comparable ages. So the first one is the Marie Duffau. This is the Ordage, is that right, Alicia? You've got them in front of you, which is, their Ordage is 12 years old, and the other one is the Delord XO. This is 15 years old. Now, Ordage and XO can be the same. They're interchangeable with Armagnac. They're not with Cognac, but with Armagnac, they are. So, Armagnac, label, aging. If you see an Armagnac that's a VS, that's a minimum of one year in wood, although it's usually one to three. A VSOP or Napoleon are the same thing in Armagnac. They're not the same thing in Cognac. And those are a minimum of four years, up to usually nine years in wood. And then XO and Ordage are 10 to 20 years, normally, but at least 10 years old. So, Armagnac VS, one to three years. VSOP or Napoleon, four to nine years. XO or Ordage. Ordage. Ordage. Ordage. Hors d'Age. Hors d'Age. 10 to 20 years. Yeah. Right, right. So, the two I passed you, fun fact, these are made at the same distillery. Two XOs from the same distillery? Yes, well, yeah, an Ordage and an XO, sure. But a 12 year and a 15 year, so comparable age here. But the thing is, they make two distinct, different house styles at the Delord Distillery. Beyond age. Beyond age. Is that what that means? Yes. So Delord makes these two distinct styles, and this is kind of an old school way of looking at it, but this is how the French would describe it. They would describe it as a masculine style and a feminine style. And the Marie Duffau is that more feminine style, a little more floral, a little more delicate fruit to it. And I think for someone who maybe is a cognac drinker and is just going to start trying some Armagnac, you start with something like Marie Duffau. If you're a whiskey drinker and you like a more rough and tumble type of spirit and you want to check out some Armagnacs, I would start with DeLorde. I think that you're going to find that to your liking. And I would definitely call it a whiskey drinker's Ode Vie for sure. Meaning big, heavy, more wood, more spice. Earthier in character for sure. Okay. And this is like DeLorde is the stereotypical Armagnac, I think, like this is one where this is Armagnac. It has the fruit and it's clearly a brandy but it has wood, it has spice, it has earth. They seem more contemplative than most of the Cognac that I've had. I think these both are delicious. I think a common trap with Cognac is smooth for the sake of being smooth. And I think and especially with the big major producers. You can add stuff to Cognac. Yeah and Cognac has coloring added, it has flavoring added, it has oak added. Well, blah. You'll add blah as part of it as a flavoring and coloring agent is aged water. Yeah, but it's like aged oak extract water essentially. Which is very low alcohol so it doesn't spoil so it's water. I mean it's like what is I think four or five percent? Yeah, something like that, really low. They are delicious. Yeah, these are delicious, right? I think I'd like the Marie Duffau, the hors d'oeuvres before my meal, and then after my meal, I will have the Delorte. I wish you hadn't said masculine and feminine. I mean I know that it's woven into their language, but because you said that, I have this conception heading in. Yeah, sorry. But it's so reinforced. The feminine one is a little more citric, it's a little more bright and the- Citric, I think, is a good point there. There's like a torched orange peel, orange oil thing going on in there, I think. Yeah. Then this one that you're describing as masculine, the 15-year is a bruiser. Yeah. Right? That's awesome. I've had the good fortune to go to Delord, actually it was at Delord on their last day of distillation when they had their big feast for the last day of distillation for a season. March 31st, earlier I said April 1st, I know we're splitting hairs there, but technically it's March 31st. And in this case, it's usually much earlier than that, because in this case, we were there in the last week of January. And they were not, this was because that was the harvest size, and they had their wine, their wine was made, and so they distilled through. And they don't distill DeFau or distill Delord, they distill O2V, and then it becomes the aging process. Yeah. And how it interacts with the barrel determines what it becomes. Marie Duffau or Delord, depending upon what the character is. These are awesome. Pretty cool, right? And these are like incredibly reasonably priced. Delord XO is like $45. Wait, it's 15 year ones, $45? Yes, that's ridiculous. You keep doing this to me, it pisses me off every single time. You know what? What was the one, oh, that Plantation Rum was like $25, right? And you're telling me that this 15 year Armagnac is under $50 right now. Yes. I swear to God. And the 25 year Delord is like $65. You will literally not find those prices on those ages anywhere. Anywhere, anywhere. The value you have in Armagnac is simply unmatched in the entire spirits world. So, why do you think those in kind of the beverage industry have really taken to Armagnac and for most consumers, they're kind of just still stuck in Cognac? Well, I think Armagnac can be a bit obtuse. You look at it on the shelves, you have these labels that are all look the same except different vintages. Armagnac is a tough nut to crack if you're Joe average American consumer. Like we know what to expect with bourbon versus rye versus scotch versus Irish. But like, yeah, everyone's been introduced to Cognac, but for years, Armagnac didn't really leave France. Like most Cognac in the world is not consumed in France. The French only consume a small amount of Cognac. The French love Armagnac. Only like 2% of all Armagnac leaves the country of France. This is the French brandy, you know. They make Cognac to sell to the rest of us, and they keep the Armagnac for themselves. So we're looking at this handout that I would normally do staff trainings with, and I put a quote that I found at the end of an Armagnac article there, just kind of talking about what you can get with Cognac now. And it really is, if you take a step back as like a spirits nerd or as somebody who's hunting rare whiskeys, whether that's bourbon or scotch, you know, you have these immensely complex, full-bodied, very, very minutely handled, like they don't get a lot of water in them. They don't get a lot of filtration or anything. You get these spirits that are coming out at the time that they're ready to come out and bottled at their natural barrel strength, which isn't 70% alcohol like it is with bourbon. You know, it's like 46, but that's barrel strength. And you have these vintages with extreme age. And you're looking at, you know, usually at the top end, 150, 180 bucks, and you're talking like 40-year-old stuff. And the complexity on the palate of these things is, it stands shoulder to shoulder with the finest of malt whisky. Which is why, and we need to use the right adjectives there, because cheap is not the way. It's a good deal. It's also, I think, selling the quality of what's in there short. I think, what would you say, undervalued? Undervalued. Appreciate it? No, I think undervalued is tremendous. Undervalued are inexpensive, but not cheap, because cheap has this negative connotation. And it's not these things are, don't be scared away. I think that there's some consumer psychology where people will get scared away by too low of a price. Yes, for sure. Because you're immediately suspicious that what's wrong with this is too cheap. And maybe that's something that Armagnac has fought, is people look at a price and say, okay, 15 years old, and it's that cheap? Something's gotta be wrong. People are used to paying $100 for scotches with no age statement, or Bourbons with no age statement on them, and Bourbons are losing their age statements. You know, because they're putting younger and younger juice in the bottle, how appealing is Armagnac right now? Where you can get something of this age at that price. And their marketing budget, because they don't market. Yeah. They don't, and so their price, the price you're paying is literally just for the liquid itself. You're hard pressed to find a more authentic and distinctive distilled spirit. So I was working on the floor here in lincoln Park for most of the holiday season, and a number of people come into the wine cellar and ask for birth year wines for their kids. And my husband's family did this. And we opened an 86 Latour like a couple of days before we were going to get married. And it was and it like went bad. And it was a huge disappointment. Not that like the wine was over the hill, but that at some point in time, like it wasn't stored properly or whatever. So for all you people that are looking for birth year things, I feel like Armagnac is a great option. Like you're not going to ruin it. It's not going to be a risk when you open it, if it's still good or not. And you can get great value. And so I mean, we're about to drink in 1977. Yeah. So the next one we're passing around is a 1977 Dartigalongue. And this is just gorgeous. Yeah. And it was like $120. Yep. Our Dartigalongue and the Lord 50-year-olds this year were both under $400 for 50-year-old product. And even the 60-year-olds were five or $600. You know what we sell a 50-year-old Bellvini for? $45,000. $45,000. And we're talking about this as like, oh, this is pretty expensive for Armagnac. It's like 390. Right. The cheapest 50-year-old scotch we've had in the last few years has been at least $20,000. $20,000. Yeah. And people buy it. Nobody drinks it because it immediately goes to the auction market. What does it come in? It comes in a Lalique Monkey. Exactly. Now we're tasting this Dartigalongue because it was an older vintage that I had open. We've got some interesting stuff. Alicia, when were you born? 1998 or something? 89. 89. I was going to say not to expose anybody's age here, but at least three of us are good. Oh, yeah. But I think we have some 89 Armagnac downstairs. I believe that was a shot taken at me. I think that was a shot taken at Brett. So I just, whatever. I grabbed this. We opened this initially, I think, because the other Whiskey Hotline member was born in 77. And I love how much fruit and juicy dried apricot almost. I know juicy and dried are not synonymous, but I think this shows more Cognac style fruit than other Armagnacs. And Alicia, the age should be on the front of that. Can you look at that real quick and tell us what the age is? Because this is, so just to get your hands around this, Greg, or your head around this. So it was distilled in 77 and then bottled in 2017. So this was the 40-year release. So you could have bought that for 200 bucks, right? Oh, less than 200 bucks. For a 40-year-old, for a birthday, if you want to give somebody the turning 40 that year, three years ago. That's amazing. Yeah, it smells terrific. That's awesome. This is just amazing. And as a preview, we'll want to keep, as we talk about this, the ones are going to be coming out, typically because as Pat's talked, said a couple of times, that the season, officially the vintage season runs until March 31st, and ergo that the vintage is not complete and the age is not complete until April 1st of this year. So April 1st, 2021 is the earliest we would see a 91, an 81, a 71, a 61, a 51. I was going to say that, and that's like packaging, right? So it still has to get bottled up. So it still has to travel across an ocean. So we normally get them like midsummer. And it's not the official, no matter at what point in time it was put into wood, the official birthday of Armagnac and Cognac, both, I believe, the official birthday is April 1st of whatever the year it was that it was distilled. They can extend the distilling season past April 1st, but it takes the government regulator stepping in and allowing it. You would have to have extreme issues with vintage and extremely late harvests for that to happen, but it can happen in some years. They're allowed to allow it. I don't know that they ever have. This stuff is just awesome. I mean, it's just, again, when you're talking about rarity and authenticity and distilled spirits, looking further. The wood manipulation to get a base spirit that's as delicate as grape spirit, again, goes back to the whole conundrum with malt spirit versus corn or rye. Grape distillate would be as delicate as malt distillate. And so all that manipulation that we talked about earlier in terms of how you're shifting around until you settle on what is a relatively neutral barrel allows us to drink something that's 40 years old that still has a ton of fruit. Yeah. The fruit on this is still so vibrant. Especially on the nose. Yeah. It dries on the palate. It definitely shows wood, like a wood character, but it's not overblown vanilla or it's not overblown spice. It's not one-dimensional wood. Yeah. Armagnac. I mean, we should all be drinking more Armagnac. Brown spirits drinkers, people who like unadulterated spirits, like, you know, this is the authentic drinking experience, I think, that would satisfy any serious whiskey nerd. Pat, man, thanks for picking this particular flight of Armagnac. It really... It seemed like a weird thing to start off the year with, but at the same time, Armagnac's an easy one to talk about, honestly. And they're dead in the middle, actually. Hopefully, now they're dead in the middle of distillation. So we saw three different single varietal Armagnac bottlings, and then we saw a 12-year and a 15-year from Basse Armagnac. Stylistically different from the same distillery. The different production styles. And then we tasted a 40-year-old expression which is lively and on its feet and not like anything else, and actually attainable by mortals. Yeah. We can probably find a 54-year-old version that's lively and sprightly on its feet. Yeah, right. So people need to get out and try some Armagnac. Yeah, totally. All right. If you got a question about Armagnac, hit us up, spiritsofbinnys.com. Once again, Brett's personal cell phone number is right. All right, cool. Well, I hope you enjoyed that journey through the regions of Armagnac and the grape varietals. It's been fun to taste them. Hopefully, you get a chance to taste them as well. Until next week, I am Pat. I'm Greg. I'm Alicia. I'm Brett. Keep tasting. Keep tasting. Keep tasting.