Armagnac often arrives with taglines of ‘France’s best-kept secret’ and ‘Gascony’s hidden gem’. As descriptions they’re somewhat appropriate – the region’s list of independent producers doesn’t contain a globe-conquering household name and a Google search of armagnac’s industry body, the BNIA, first returns results for the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance – but despite its reputation as the spirit for those in the know, France’s oldest brandy is enjoying a share of the spotlight.

Volumes are still small and, while the BNIA isn’t entirely forthcoming about exact figures, armagnac sells around four or five million bottles a year, barely a dent on the 222.3 million bottles of cognac that were sold in 2021, according to the Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac.

But culturally, it’s a category that punches above its weight. In 2022, Domaine Tariquet Pure Folle Blanche 15 Year Old became the first armagnac to be named Supreme Champion in International Spirits Challenge history, and the category found new fans during the Covid lockdowns as curious drinkers and bartenders searched for a point of difference.

“More and more professionals such as bartenders, mixologists, sommeliers, wine shops and importers are curious and interested in discovering armagnac,” says Ithier Bouchard, commercial director at Domaine Tariquet.

“[The growth] has not been a question of geography but a question of people, of profile. In big markets, there are potentially more people interested, but you can find some everywhere. Armagnac has always been a question of people first, and that’s what makes it so exciting – it’s human and it’s real.”

As it tends to be with the world’s precious, underappreciated things, the converts are often fanatical. So unsurprisingly, as word spreads it has attracted interest beyond Gascony.

At the end of 2021, Pernod Ricard completed the sale of a majority stake in Société des Produits d’Armagnac, the owner of armagnac brands Marquis de Montesquiou and Comte de Lauvia, to the German-based Cloudsweeper owned by Alexander Stein, and 2020 saw the launch of US-based Bhakta Spirits. These developments mark an interesting turning point for the region – not only is the category receiving foreign investment but an influx of international attitudes.

The arrival in Gascony of Bhakta Spirits founder Raj Bhakta must’ve surprised a few of the locals. The founder of American whiskey brand Whistle Pig at one point ran for congress and appeared in the Donald Trump-hosted reality TV show The Apprentice. He was drawn to the region with the vision that there was an untapped consumer base among whisky and bourbon fans.

“It’s a very historical, rural area, and people aren’t used to this larger-than-life character who rolls up singing Be Our Guest,” says Amanda Garnham, who stepped down from the BNIA after 18 years in 2021 and has since joined Bhakta Spirits in a consulting capacity.

Bridging the gap

The brand’s flagship collection, Bhakta 50, blends armagnacs – the youngest being 50 and the oldest more than 150 years old – before the liquid undergoes a finish in Islay Scotch whisky casks.

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“People were up in arms to begin with, particularly about the finish he was doing to the armagnacs,” says Garnham. “Even I was sceptical, but they are lovely, and I understand his thinking, bridging the gap between armagnac and whisky and bourbon drinkers is quite difficult, so this can be something familiar and, in many ways, armagnac can be closer to a single malt whisky than to a cognac.”

And the arrival of a character like Raj Bhakta, although greeted with twitching of curtains and sideways glances, could be a shot in the arm for the region.

“Already we have something like 40% of the American market, but it is very niche over there even now. But whatever Bhakta is doing in America now is great for the whole category because it’s putting the name of armagnac on people’s lips,” says Garnham.

“Tiny producers who may only have a couple of barrels are now coming to us with particular vintages that might otherwise go to a cooperative for peanuts and instead we’re paying proper money. It’s supporting small producers, we’re employing people, we are going to a tonnellerie and buying 40 barrels whereas they’d normally get one or two barrels from each different producer. We’re trying to ensure that everybody benefits.”

Bhakta Spirits has tapped into something unique to armagnac. The access the category can give to extremely old and rare vintages is unrivalled. The brand’s stock includes 350 bottles from the 1868 vintage alongside bottlings from 1878, 1888, 1893, 1898, and 1900.

“These are extremely rare, extremely valuable. It’s an amazing thing to contemplate for a minute how old they are, what an armagnac from 1868 has seen while it has sat quietly in the chez somewhere,” says Garnham.

The extreme age statements can be an attention-grabbing hook for armagnac, but it’s in the category’s variety that many of the brandy’s enthusiasts find what they’re looking for.

“Spirits connoisseurs are not necessarily looking for old armagnacs,” says Tariquet’s Bouchard. “They often appreciate young or mid-aged armagnacs – old doesn’t mean always better quality.”

And regardless of preference, there’s an inherent lack of scalability to selling your wider category on the promise of 19th-century stock.

“There is an important demand for very old and rare bottlings, however, every year there are fewer stocks of these armagnacs in our cellar and in the region overall so it would be difficult to sustain this market,” explains Jean-Noël Dollet, executive manager at Janneau.

Armagnac’s strength is in its variety. Producers can use a broad palette of grape varieties, the four most common being Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche, Colombard, and Baco, which is unique to the region, but producers can choose from 10 authorised varieties. And, while the category is notable for the age of some vintages, it goes both ways, with producers authorised to release an unmatured Blanche that spends just three months in stainless steel.

“Depending on the market we are in we can offer something different,” says Dollet. “If the market is whisky-driven, we can focus more on our Single Distillery range, which is made using a double distillation process with Ugni Blanc from Ténarèze. In more traditional markets we go for our Janneau Blend range, which is made of a blend of single and double distillation eaux-de-vie from Ugni Blanc and Baco from both Bas-Armagnac and Ténarèze. And then you have markets like China that like to focus on vintages.”

Therein lies an explanation as to why people love armagnac and why it remains a relatively obscure spirit. For a growing region that is just 15,000ha, the range of expressions on offer is astounding, but for an uninitiated consumer, the amount of choice itself could make it difficult to know where to begin.

Armagnac has all the tools to grow in scale, and the arrival of brands like Bhakta and continued plaudits from tastemakers will ensure its introduction to fresh audiences. But for a spirits category that is so loved for its idiosyncrasies and vagaries it wouldn’t want to welcome too much change.

“Fashion is short term, and armagnac is long term,” says Bouchard. “We don’t aim to create a fashion, we just want more consumers to discover armagnac.”

Armagnac is never going to be the global giant that other categories are, but it will continue to attract an audience of hardcore supporters, and anyway, sometimes it’s more interesting to be the Velvet Underground than the Backstreet Boys.