Darroze Les Grands Assemblages 20 Year Old Armagnac
£89.75
The wine
Silky and rich, full of life. Sultana and honeyed figs on the nose with a swirl of caramelised orange peel, then dark chocolate, caramel and leather on the palate, all wrapped in gentle warmth. Twenty years is the age at which Armagnac tends to find its balance, with the alcohol tamed and the tannins settled.
Les Grands Assemblages blends across estates and years, and the age on the label is that of the youngest Armagnac in the bottle. The fruit is Bas-Armagnac, grown on the sandy, iron-rich sables fauves that keep the eaux-de-vie aromatic and fine. Wine for distilling is fermented dry without sulphur or malolactic, distilled promptly, then given six to thirty-six months in new Gascon oak before moving to older barrels where maturation slows and the fruit survives. Nothing is coloured or sweetened, and the strength comes down through evaporation in the cellar rather than by adding water. This bottling is a blend of Armagnacs aged between twenty and twenty-five years.
The producer
Darroze
View all Darroze winesArmagnac Darroze is not a distillery but a house of selection. Jean Darroze ran a restaurant at Villeneuve-de-Marsan in the Landes, and it was there that his son Francis learned to love the eaux-de-vie of Gascony. From the late 1960s Francis began travelling the small estates of Bas-Armagnac, buying casks a few at a time and ageing them himself. In 1974 he founded the business properly, and built a reputation on a single stubborn principle: never reduce an Armagnac with added water, but let it come down to strength through slow evaporation in the cellar. It costs years and it costs volume, and it is why a Darroze bottling tastes of its origin rather than of a recipe.
His son Marc now runs the house from cellars at Roquefort and Labastide’Armagnac, working with around thirty partner domaines across Bas-Armagnac, the sandy, iron-rich ’sables fauves’ country that yields the region’s most aromatic spirits. Two ranges carry the name. La Collection Unique bottles single estates by vintage, unfiltered and at cask strength. Les Grands Assemblages, the range here, blends across estates and years to a consistent house style, with the age on the label always that of the youngest Armagnac in the bottle. Nothing is coloured, sweetened or adjusted.
