Our goal for our visit to the southwest region of France was to visit vineyards and buy some wine from this region and also to do ‘le degustation de Armagnac’.  We found a small farm and a tasting room but first the vintner wanted to show us a tour of her families cave.  Not only did we learn how Armagnac [single distillation] is made and how it is different from Cognac [double distillation] but we enjoyed seeing barrels that dated back to 1970 and when her grandfather was still making the Armagnac.  This small farm is only run by family members.

We tasted 10 year and 15 year Armagnac in the official tasting room but were invited to taste from any of the 1970 to 2014 barrels in the cave!

As you will see from the pictures, we tasted multiple Armagnac directly from the barrels and then purchased a 1975, a 1980 and a 1990.

For myself, i didn’t care too much for the newer Armagnacs but they got smoother and a bit sweeter as they aged and a quite enjoyed the older ones, especially the 1975 🙂

The barrel tasting was the highlight of our visit to the region and I would recommend it to anyone visiting this region.  The countryside is also beautiful dotted with many chateau’s, fields of sunflowers, fields of corn and of course, vineyards!