There are some 800 Armagnac producers in the southwestern France region of the same name that is located to the west of Toulouse and about 150km (100 miles) south of Bordeaux. Only several hundred bottle their Armagnac (the others sell their brandy to négociants, who buy in bulk and then resell it), and of these only a handful really sell in commercial quantities. The rest sell 500 bottles or fewer to customers who visit their properties or at local markets.
The largest pressing room in all of Europe.
Armagnac producers don’t come much bigger than Domaine du Tariquet. The largest family-owned vineyard in France, with 1,000 hectares of vines (2,500 acres), Tariquet has been in the Grassa family since 1912. Yves Grassa, the family patriarch, broke every rule in the French winemaker’s handbook in the 1980s and 1990s, studying wine-making at the University of California at Davis, as well as spending time in Australian and South African vineyards, learning everything that he could about their operations. Today, this Côtes de Gascogne vineyard is one of the most technologically advanced in the world.
Tariquet grapes travel from field to fermentation tank in refrigerated wagons and under a layer of inert gas. Programmable, pneumatic presses gently squeeze the grapes, and, once in the tanks, grapes and juice are kept at cool temperatures for hours before the long, slow fermentation begins.
Some have called Grassa, who was named IWC Winemaker of the Year in 1987, a genius for having revolutionized the Gascon wine industry, while others have called him the best Australian winemaker in France. But the Grassa family sells almost 10 million bottles of wine annually, much of it being the crisp, fresh, fruity, Vin de Pays Côtes de Gascogne Tariquet white wines that are arguably some of the best-value-for-money wines around.
But I wasn’t at the family domain on a mid-November day to see this legendary winemaker. He’s not there much these days, anyway, having turned over the Domaine du Tariquet to his sons, Armin and Rémy. And, like some modern-day musketeer, he’s taken on an even bigger challenge: the creation of a 10,000-hectare vineyard in Romania. But that’s another story…
Teach your children well
A critical period in the history of the domain, and a turning point for Grassa senior, occurred in 1982. A second oil crisis had pushed the world economy into recession in the late 1970s, and, much like today, the economies of advanced nations stagnated and unemployment began to grow. The Grassa family had been relying up until then on Armagnac sales to earn their living. This was logical. Gascon white wines had a lousy reputation, and no one considered the high-acid, low-alcohol Ugni Blanc and Colombard grapes that they grew good for anything other than distilling into Armagnac or for bulk wine sales. Thinking that he might be able to lessen their dependence on Armagnac, a luxury product that was hurt hard in the economic downturn, he decided to find a way to make their grapes into better wine.
Although everyone told Grassa to stick to Armagnac, he made his now legendary sabbatical to California and other New World wine regions to study other grape growing and wine-making ways, and he began to replant varieties already grown on the property to reduce yield and increase quality, as well as planting varieties, such as Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Chenin, that were not normally grown in the region. Between 1982 and 1986, Tariquet won first place in blind tastings at the Montpellier Competition for non-appellation wines.
The lesson in all of this is encapsulated in the domain’s motto: “Tariquet: In praise of disobedience” (“Let us teach our children to disobey us!”). Pretty radical stuff, particularly for tradition-rich France, where most nails that stick up are quickly hammered down. But in the context of Grassa’s revolutionary, slightly heretical, outrageous behavior (as viewed from the perspective of the orthodox, tradition-steeped French wine industry), it makes perfect sense.
And, on the Domaine du Tariquet website, which devotes en entire page to this philosophy, you can see that this “reasoned rebelliousness” is in keeping with the Gascon character, and that “breaking the rules” has allowed Tariquet to constantly adapt to changing market tastes.
Even the light in the chai has a special quality.
Following a quick tour of the largest pressing room in all of Europe, Armin Grassa took me and a group of wine and spirit journalists from England and Austria into one of the five Tariquet chais, where the equivalent of 1.7 million bottles of Armagnac is aged in French oak barrels. He explained that Tariquet uses either 400L new oak barrels or 225L or 300L barrels that previously contained wine. “We select the type of barrel based on the quality of each eau-de-vie,” he said.
Séverine Chomat, who looks after Armagnac production, added, “The eau-de-vie starts to age in a ‘dry’ chai in new barrels, which promotes evaporation, for up to three years. It’s then moved to older barrels, finally ending up in a damper, older chai where high humidity slows evaporation.” Understanding how the amount of time in new and old wood (along with barrel size/type/toast) influences flavor and adds a touch of sweetness and roundness, while aging the Armagnac without allowing it to become oaky, is the art of the cellar master.
From the chai, we headed to the distillation room where the domain’s traditional, continuous still, a wood-burning alembic, was in operation. Other than some downtime for cleaning, the still runs constantly from October through mid-January, distilling 150hl (15,000L) of wine each day.
Armin Grassa points out a feature on the traditional, wood-burning alembic used to distill the eau-de-vie that will become Tariquet Armagnac.
The contrast, going from the mega-high-tech winery to the cobweb-shrouded chai, with its barrels of maturing Armagnac, was startling. But by the time we arrived in the distillation room, with its wood-fired alembic (preferred to a gas-fired still, because the variations in heat are felt to produce a greater spectrum of favors), and the Tariquet philosophy suddenly made all the sense in the world to me.
The alchemy of Armagnac, with its perfect marriage between fruit and wood, is much like the fusion of tradition and innovation that characterizes the Grassa family. For as innovative as it’s wines are, the Armagnac that comes from the largest family vineyard in France is as distinctive, finessed and unique as that made by the most artisanal producer. And its distinctive uniqueness is what makes Armagnac such a special brandy.
