The Château du Busca-Maniban:
an award-winning, cliché-busting Armagnac

Floriane de Ferron is not one to suffer clichés gladly. The owner of the 360-year-old-and-counting Château du Busca-Maniban, an outstanding example of Gascon architecture, doesn’t fit the image of the typical Armagnac producer. The Gers department, where the chateau is located, is one of the most rural and sparsely populated areas in Western Europe. Traditional Armagnac, like that produced at Château du Busca-Maniban, is more closely associated with overall-clad farmers whose tasting rooms double as the family kitchen, than a historic monument with an imposing arched stone gateway, opening into a main courtyard, and a monumental staircase, topped with Ionic columns.

Mme de Ferron is both charming and distinguished. The day that I visited, her attire and look reminded me of the fashionable women I would see on the street when I worked in Milan. No doubt her time spent working as an assistant to the designer Paco Rabanne honed her fashion sense. Although petite in size, her not-so-wide shoulders are supporting the responsibility of running a family business that has existed for eight generations. Her calm and professional demeanor was undoubtedly honed during her 35-year career as a lawyer. After closing her law practice in 2005, she began to run the chateau and further develop its Armagnac business.

The history of Château du Busca-Maniban begins with the Seigneurs of Maniban, an important family in Gascony for over two centuries. Jean de Maniban, the founding father, was Master in Chambers of the Royal Court in Bordeaux, launching four succeeding generations of Manibans on important parliamentary careers. In 1620, his son Thomas de Maniban became general legal counsel of the Toulouse parliament, second only to Paris in importance as a government seat. In addition to being a very prestigious position, the post of general legal counsel placed key powers in the hands of a single man and Thomas began to build a chateau to match his prominence.

Work on the chateau continued with his son Jean-Guy, who was named a Marquis in 1681, and his grandson Joseph-Gaspard, who was president of the Languedoc parliament from 1722 to 1762. After having married the sister of King Louis XV’s chancellor, Joseph-Gaspard became a member of the King’s cabinet in Versailles. Following his death, his daughter and only child, the Marquise Marie-Christine de Livry inherited the chateau. It was Marie-Christine who sold the chateau to one of Mme de Ferron’s forebears in 1803.

To supplement the income from Armagnac and the production of cereal, which is the primary crop on the 200-ha estate, the chateau is open to visitors for seven months of the year. These visits, which include an Armagnac tasting, are well worth the small tour fee. Sitting on one of the highest points in the area, the chateau offers impressive 360-degree views of the surrounding vineyards and cereal fields. On a clear day the snow-capped Pyrenees are visible. The location was once the site of a medieval village, and a 15th century chapel is incorporated into one of the chateau’s wings. Another vestige of the village is La Ruelle, or “Little Street,” a cobblestone corridor off of the chateau’s master kitchen. Walking down this 700-year-old corridor, viewing the low-cut doors that are testimony to the diminutive size of those medieval occupants, gives the Armagnac that you’re to taste a special perspective.

This stroll back in time is continued in the chai, or cellar, where the Armagnac is aged in wooden, 400 to 420 liter barrels made by local tonnelier Giles Bartholomo. Mme de Ferron said that she uses new barrels that are made from oak harvested from forests in the Armagnac region. Whereas Cognac uses predominantly Limousin oak, which imparts a distinct vanilla sweetness, Gascon oak tends to be tighter and richer in tannins for slower aging and less sweetness in the brandy.

Rather uniquely, the Château du Busca-Maniban has two chai; one that is quite humid, Mme de Ferron explains, because of an underground river, and a second which is drier and which, she says, allows the Armagnac bouquet to develop more fully. So young Armagnac starts off in the more humid chai and, once its character has begun to develop, it graduates to the drier one. Full of cobwebs and mushrooms that, she says, change color depending on the season, the humid chai is useful for reducing the alcohol loss that is inherent in the aging process. I suppose that this is because the more humid oak allows less evaporation through the wood, what the French refer to as la part des Anges (“the Angels’ share”).

The Château du Busca-Maniban Armagnac is produced from the white Ugni Blanc grape. Depending on the soil and climate, other Armagnac producers may use, in addition to Ugni Blanc, the Colombard, Folle Blanche and white Baco grapes, and (less frequently) older traditional varieties such as Blanc Dame (Clairette de Gascogne), Graisse, white Jurançon, white and rosé Mauzac, and Meslier Saint-François.

Following their harvest in October, the grapes are vinified using traditional methods to produce a wine with a typically distinct flavor, a relatively low alcohol content (8 to 10%), and high total acidity levels. By law the wine must be distilled before the end of March following the harvest. The Château du Busca-Maniban distils its Armagnac in November to avoid any possibility of the low-alcohol, sulfite-free wine oxidizing.

The distillation process is something right out of the Middle Ages. Traditional distillation uses the Armagnac alembic armagnacais, a continuous still with a design that dates from a royal patent issued by King Louis XVIII in 1818. The alembic still is normally heated with wood, which must be kept burning at a constant temperature during the distillation process. The intense heat of the fire forces the alcohol vapor to rise in the opposite direction of wine that is fed continuously into the bottom of a cooling apparatus that is used to reduce the vapor’s temperature, allowing it to increase in alcohol content and to absorb the wine’s aromatic substances.

This distillation process is the main difference between Armagnac and Cognac. Cognac uses the same classical double distillation that is used to make Whisky in Scotland. The resulting brandy has an alcohol content of 72% (by volume). The Armagnac alembic produces a brandy that is usually between 52 and 60% alcohol (by volume). The lower alcohol level allows Armagnac to retain flavor components that are lost during the double distillation. When young, these flavor components can make Armagnac rustic and slightly raw. Given ten or more years time these elements develop into the aromatic complexity that Armagnac connoisseurs savor. At the eau de vie stage the Armagnac is still in its fiery youth but it can already be very aromatic with fruity scents of prune, pear, etc., and it often shows floral notes such as lime blossom and vine flowers.

Tired, sleep-deprived men (in the case of the Château du Busca-Maniban, it’s two brothers, Philippe and Paul Gironi, who bring their traveling-still-on-wheels to the chateau for two weeks each November) keep the still running constantly day and night at a constant temperature. All of this activity is capped with a traditional meal for all of those involved in the distillation, along with the producer’s family. Should a citizen of medieval Busca somehow stumble upon a Back-to-the-Future-type portal and enter the brûlerie, or distillation room, at the Château du Busca-Maniban, he or she would feel right at home.

It’s that authenticity that gives the chateau’s Armagnac its round, elegant flavor, with strong hints of dried prune, vanilla, menthol and licorice. The chateau makes both blended and single-vintage, or millésime, Armagnac. I started off by tasting the Hors d’Âge 15 ans, a blend of 15-year-old Armagnacs. It was very smooth, with hints of burnt orange, dried prunes and a long finish.

Next was a 1985 millésime. This almost 25-year-old Armagnac was showing the Ténarèze Armagnac propensity to begin opening up around its 20th birthday, gaining in complexity and continuing to soften as the years pass. This was the first Ténarèze millésime Armagnac that I had ever tasted, and I have to admit being pleasantly surprised that a second cliché, that any Armagnac from the Bas-Armagnac is good and anything from the Ténarèze is mediocre, was being exploded.

To understand the debate about which region produces the best Armagnac, you first need to know that there are three distinct Armagnac regions, Bas-Armagnac, Ténarèze, and Haut-Armagnac, each with a different climate and soil type. For many years, there has been this generalization that the best Armagnac comes from the Bas-Armagnac region.

When I sat down with Mme de Ferron to interview her, I must confess that I was more concerned about the Cognac vs. Armagnac debate, and I hadn’t really thought about intra-Armagnac rivalries. However, before I could mention that other French brandy, the conversation turned to whether or not a Ténarèze Armagnac, like hers, was equal to a Bas-Armagnac Armagnac.

This very old debate revolves principally around the regions’ two different soil types (more sandy for the Bas-Armagnac vs. argilo-calcaire, or a blend of clay and limestone, for the Ténarèze) and the choice of grape variety (Bas-Armagnac producers prefer the Bacco variety that likes sandy soil, while Ténarèze producers, including Château du Busca-Maniban, use the Ugni Blanc grape, which grows well on limestone and chalk-based soil). Certainly there are microclimates and different soil types in both regions, and this debate, like all things dealing with taste, is extremely subjective. I firmly believe that such a discussion requires thorough research, so I elected to reflect on the question while trying my third Armagnac, a 1976 millésime.

Mme de Ferron had told me in advance that the 1985 had a shorter finish than the 1976, but that the 1985 was preferred by women because of its fruity accents. I have a preference for wine and spirits with a long finish, however, so my vote, without any masculine bias, goes to the older millésime, which has truly exceptional length. This Armagnac was round and smooth, well-balanced and, like all three Armagnacs that I tasted, a deep orange hue. At 33 years of age, it was in the sweet spot for Ténarèze Armagnac, a complex, well-balanced brandy that certainly deserves to be considered one of the best distilled spirits in the world. And Château du Busca-Maniban Armagnac regularly wins top awards in competitions around the world. Respected spirits guru F. Paul Pacult recently named a Château du Busca-Maniban Armagnac as one of the world’s top 115 distilled spirits.

So, I am convinced that Ténarèze Armagnac does age extremely well, maybe even better than those from the Bas-Armagnac (but that, fortunately, will require more research to confirm). Based on my interview with Château du Busca-Maniban’s maîtresse de maison, Mme de Ferron, it appears that Ténarèze women can also get better with age. This historic source of Armagnac is in good hands.

Fête de la Saint-Jean celebration at Château du Busca-Maniban

To culminate the evening, a fire is set to a giant stack of 360-year-old oak timbers taken from the chateau’s roof when it was renovated recently. Within a short time, the conflagration is shooting flames a dozen meters into the air, making it difficult to know if it is the fire, or the armagnac that is being sipped, that is creating the comforting feeling that envelopes you. Some of it, undoubtedly, is that nice warm feeling you get when you’re in the hands of a welcoming host.

Tagged as: Armagnac, Gascony