Cognac and Armagnac – their differences and how to serve them…

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Question from Elizabeth Loh, Singapore.

Can you please tell me what is the difference between a Cognac and an Armagnac? Also, could you advise what is the best way to enjoy an Armagnac?

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Cognac and armagnac are, with respect to calvados, the two most famous brandies from France. Named after the town of Cognac, which occupies the centre of its region, cognac comes from a wide area that extends along the banks of the Charente all the way to the Atlantic coast. Cognac is 465 kilometers southwest of Paris and 120 kilometers north of Bordeaux and covers a large part of the department of Charente, all of the Charente-Maritime and a few areas of the Dordogne and Deux-S’vres.

From about 160 kilometres south in the Gascony region of Southwestern France comes armagnac, whose making pre-dates cognac by some 150 years. Armagnac is traditionally given a single distillation, through a small continuous columnar still called an alambic, while cognac has always been made with two separate distillations the double distillation in copper pot stills. Today, however, some armagnac is also double-distilled. Cognac must then be matured for a minimum of around 30 months in old French oak casks,

Makers of both cognac and armagnac are looking to begin with a thin, high acid white wine. While most cognac is today largely made from ugni blanc or picpoul, meaning ‘lip stinger’ as a result of its acidity, it is required to be made from at least 90 of a combination of ugni blanc, folle blanche and colombard. Ugni Blanc is relatively easy to grow and gives high yields with low alcohol, high acidity, and neutral flavours with strong floral aromatics and a spiciness that tends to accentuate during maturation. Although it is being phased out in armagnac, the hybrid variety of bacco is still permitted in declining amounts.

To drink, armagnac and cognac are poles apart. Cognac is restrained, delicate, floral and perfumed, long and smooth, silky and tightly balanced. Typically, as far as I am concerned, it needs considerable age to acquire genuine complexity and character. Personally, I only ever get really interested in cognac of XO level and older, by which time it has been matured for an average of at least 25 years.

Armagnac is another story. It’s heady, fiery and spicy – profoundly aromatic in its youth and very rustic, assertive and even meaty in its maturity. Since armagnac is distilled slightly cooler, and never reaches the extreme alcoholic strength of young cognac, it tends to retain more of the rather wild, heady elements that can deliver more of a headache the morning after, as I tend to experience. That doesn’t stop me, mind!

As for serving armagnac and cognac, I will begin by saying that the English got it totally wrong. The traditional brandy balloon glass is nothing short of an abomination, since all it does is to accentuate the powerful alcohols, spice and esters of these great spirits. And as for the truly absurd notion of warming them first – you would have to be used to drinking rocket fuel to be able to put your face anywhere near a glass of this. What a perfect waste of a great drink!

All cognac and armagnac need are a small sherry snifter, or else a standard ISO shaped tasting glass, which in my humble opinion is the perfect shape for these spirits. And, if you want to, do drop in a small amount of bottled water to cut back the alcohol and let the flavours and aromas run free. Just don’t tell the French!
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