How to Taste Armagnac

Armagnac is tasted like wine, in three steps and three parts of your body are used:  eyes, nose and mouth.

1st Step: Visual

This focuses on the color, limpidity and viscosity of the glass’ contents.

Position your thumb behind the glass. See if the thumb print is clear: perfect limpidity.

Tip the glass and give it a half-turn. The thicker the ‘jambe’ or ‘legs’, and the slower they descend, the more fat/oily elements the Armagnac has, these being crucial for ageing.

2nd step: Nose

The Nose of Armagnac is the richest step. No wonder why?

It can give you good enjoyment and pleasures that remain different for a very long time, up to several hours for the same glass.

Please don't go sticking your nose right in the glass and inhaling deeply. All you'll do is singe your nasal passages with powerful alcohol esters.

Instead, hold the glass at chest level and let the delicate fragrances waft up. In seconds, your senses will be discovering Armagnac like a bouquet of flowers. Now bring it a little closer, maybe to chin level, and you'll begin to see what Armagnac is all about.

The floral aromas are the first to rise from the glass: violet, lime flower, acacia, hawthorn or honey.  These aromas predominate in ROXANE, then evolve the longer the ageing lasts towards aromas of ripe and candied fruits : plum, quince, apricot, mirabelle.

Cyrano 25 meanwhile reveals woody notes, toasted perfumes and sometimes rancio (typical notes of ageing): from oak to walnut, from smokiness to roasted notes, Armagnac gains in complexity over the years.

3rd step: Taste

Now take the tiniest sip of Armagnac -- about a half-teaspoonful, blend it with your saliva and roll the liquid around your tongue, your cheeks and your gums.

Vigorous and strong as soon as it is in the mouth, other characteristics are found like roundness, smoothness and fullness together with multiplicity of aromas coating them with supplementary complexity.  A guarantee of the quality is the aromatic persistence allowing you to savour its richness for longer and to postpone the limits of its evanescence.

Once your glass is finally empty, the paradise can start. Focus on the last drops of the bottom part of the glass, where all aromas are concentrated and well aerated which offer the best it can.

Drinking it this way, you'll see why people love this stuff.

Gianni