armagnac

Year five of the San Antonio Cocktail Conference revealed a city at a captivating crossroads. Originally planned as both a charity venture and a showcase of a then-nascent cocktail scene, the festival now finds itself in an on-trend city with more bar and restaurant hype than ever before. The festival did minimal format tweaking this year,…

Jeffrey Morgenthaler  is Food Republic’s Contributing Cocktail Editor and author of the occasional column, Easy Drinking. Jeffrey is an industry veteran, having worked at many styles of bars for the past two decades. He currently manages the bars Clyde Common and Pépé Le Moko in Portland, Oregon, and is the author of  The Bar Book: Elements of…

You guys, you know Armagnac. It’s cognac’s older and better-value cousin, a brandy made in Gascony, in southwestern France. Its base is a still wine that usually includes some combination of the high-acidity grapes: Baco Blanc, Ugni Blanc, Folle Blanche (which, by the way, translates loosely as “crazy white female”) and Colombard. The wine made…

A funny thing happened in Cognac this year. The grapes came early. At least that’s how Guillaume Lamy, Vice President at Cognac Pierre Ferrand, puts it. An unusually warm spring and rainy summer resulted in an early harvest in the French brandy-producing region – the earliest in some 40 years, in fact. Lamy explains just…

NOTE: You may have noticed a bit of an Armagnac theme happening over the past few days at Food Republic. We started with an intro to this unsung French spirit, explored the more rustic Blanche Armagnacs, and offered up some cocktails. Today writer Nora Maynard takes us on a trip to where our new favorite…

The Stinger is a semi-old-school classic cocktail. The drink itself has pre-Prohibition roots, but it didn't hit peak popularity until the Rat Pack era of the 1950s. Most spirits-only cocktails should be stirred, not shaken, but tradition dictates that the Stinger be shaken with ice. French mixologist Romain Chassang of Ugo & Spirits created this…

Moonshine is not the only formerly illicit white spirit in town. Brandy producers in the Gascony region of Southwest France have a rustic white hooch tradition of their own: Blanche Armagnac. While traditional Armagnacs are aged in oak until the liquid is toasty and brown, and are meant to be swirled and sipped from snifters—it…

What exactly is Armagnac? Last year this grape-based French brandy celebrated its 700th anniversary. Yet despite enjoying a healthy 150-year seniority over its slicker mass-market cousin, Cognac, the feisty indie spirit has yet to achieve the same kind of international stardom. Or presence in rap videos. Hailing from the eponymous region in Gascony in the…