Armagnac

Spirits & brews· spirit

What it is

Armagnac is a brandy distilled from white wine in the Gascony region of southwest France, traditionally in a single pass through a column still.

What it tastes like

On the nose: cloves; the house adds dried fruit, toffee, oak ✳. Among its measured molecules: eugenol.

What goes with it

Salt and acid

Salt

Salt not measured yet.

Acid

Acid not measured yet.

Unusual pairings

Pairs the library can cite that almost nobody makes.

Every one of its 1 compounds carries a paper the library can cite.

eugenolaromaphenolreads as odor of cloves (PubChem)Measured in 19 of 338 ingredients.cite
Quantified by HS-SPME-GC-MS in monovarietal Armagnac wine spirits (Folle blanche, Ugni blanc and Baco blanc) aged 2 to 30 years in oak barrels: concentrations ranged from 31.7 to 327.1 µg/L. The paper attributes the presence of eugenol in these aged spirits, regardless of grape variety, to extraction from the oak during barrel ageing ("in wine spirits aged in oak barrels, eugenol is present regardless of the grape variety used, since various compounds, including eugenol, are extracted from the wood"); seven 2018-vintage spirits followed through their first 2 years of barrel ageing showed a direct eugenol uptake of 15.7 to 148.2 µg/L over that period, 95-100% of total content for the Folle blanche and Ugni blanc samples. — Céline Franc et al. 2023, Food Chemistry (Section 3.2 ("Eugenol quantitation in white Armagnac wine spirits") and Figure 2 discussion)Measurement only — the source text is licensed facts-only.

Sources