Darroze 1981 Domaine De Lahitte Bas Armagnac

67% Ugni blanc, 33% Colombard. Nice golden color with red tints. The nose is very seductive thanks to the aromas like fruits, chocolate, brown tobacco and licorice. Superb. The palate is rich, also very complex in aromas. Orange peel, prune, cinnamon, pepper. The tannins are very delicate, very long finish. Distillery Notes

This was the original basis for the business: single vintage, cask-strength, single domain Armagnacs bottled to order. No additives are used for the Collection series, and none of these Armagnacs are ever blended. Each is marked with the month and year of bottling so that the buyer knows exactly how long the spirit rested in barrel (once bottled, the ageing process stops). 

Marc has partnered with a high-quality mobile distiller, who makes the rounds in a truck after harvest much as mobile distillers would in the bygone days of horse and wagon. Thus Marc both buys barrels of aged Armagnac from farmers like his father did, and he buys the just-distilled white spirits from a given farm and ages it himself. Typically, a new spirit will go into a new barrel in the drier Darroze cellar (Marc has separate ageing cellars), two conditions that encourage faster evaporation and oxidation. After several years, this spirit is racked into an older barrel and moved to the more humid cellar, factors that naturally slow the maturation process. Importer Notes

46.% ABV  Bottled: October 2021. 40 yrs. in oak