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NUMBER TWO AND BITCHING LOUDER

Armagnac

I’m not a big drinker of spirits these days. Wine provides more nuance and interest at the expense of fewer brain cells. But I happened to acquire an interest in Armagnac during trips to Bordeaux, where it’s often served after dinner at the great châteaux, and at the renowned bistro La Tupina, where wine merchants and châteaux owners savor old Armagnac vintages after washing down a roast chicken with a bottle of Pauillac. Over time I came to appreciate the complexity and variety of France’s No. 2 brandy, as well as the sense of completion and contemplation inspired by an after-dinner snifter. “At its best,” claims British spirits expert Nicholas Faith, “Armagnac offers the drinker a depth, a natural sweetness, and a fullness unmatched by even the finest cognac.”

Everyone in the heavily forested Gascony region, a hundred miles south of Bordeaux, will tell you that Armagnac is France’s oldest spirit, first distilled as early as 1411. Cognac got off to a much later start, but that town’s position on the Charente River allowed for easy transport and eventual international renown. The brandy of Armagnac remained something of a local cult, and it was often credited for the great longevity of the inhabitants. While Cognac production is concentrated in a handful of wealthy firms, Armagnac is still largely an artisanal product crafted by feisty individuals like Martine Lafitte of Domaine Boingnères.

With her jet-black helmet of hair, her big Valentino tortoiseshell glasses, and her tiger-striped sweater and tight white pants, Lafitte might be the proprietress of a beauty salon or travel agency. Here in the homeland of d’Artagnan and foie gras, I was expecting someone a little more … rustic. One is tempted to say that she is not the typical Armagnac producer, except that the more people you talk to here, the more you realize that this is a region of Gallic individualists who passionately disagree about how to make le vrai Armagnac. In this regard, the region is more like Burgundy than Bordeaux—a place of small plots and contentious peasants going their own way, squabbling among themselves about le vrai Armagnac even as they insult the integrity of that other French brandy that fills duty-free shops around the globe.

The Boingnères estate, in the Bas-Armagnac region, which has been in Lafitte’s family since 1807, comprises about fifty acres—not much when you consider that her Armagnac is in demand from Tokyo to New York. Half of that acreage is planted with the Folle Blanche grape, which is Lafitte’s particular passion. Folle Blanche is more difficult to raise than Ugni Blanc and Colombard, two more common grape varieties, and hence is on the decline, but to her mind it produces the richest and most aromatic Armagnac. Lafitte’s father was one of the great champions of Folle Blanche, but many of his neighbors disagreed with his strident advocacy of it as the true grape of Armagnac, preferring the more forgiving varieties. One day he arrived at his chai to find a cross of flowers from the cemetery in front of the cellar door. “It’s a tough region,” Martine Lafitte says proudly, getting a last drag on her Craven A before she takes me in to the cellar. “We fight for our beliefs.”

Lafitte shows me the old-style alembic—twin copper towers wherein the wine is heated and evaporated in the winter, following the harvest. She distills to about 49 percent alcohol, producing a more flavorful spirit than the 70 percent typical in Cognac. The spirit gains additional flavor and mellowness in the oak casks, where it may develop for decades. Unlike some makers, Lafitte doesn’t water it down to 40 percent when it’s bottled.

Regulations for the region allow Armagnac to be sold in as little as two years, but these young brandies are to be avoided at all costs. Five-year-old Armagnac can be labeled VO, VSOP, or réserve. But the best Armagnacs are the older vintages, which are seldom bottled before ten years