CARAFE 75 ans (700 ml)

At Château de Bordeneuve near Eauze, the Guasch family controls every stage of production — vineyard, 1921 copper alembic armagnacais, medieval cellar, and bottling line — a vertical integration rare even within Bas-Armagnac. The estate's sables fauves (tawny sandy soils) are the defining substrate of the sub-appellation: low-fertility, well-drained, they push vines to concentrate aromatic compounds while yielding distillates of unusual finesse and fruit persistence. At 75 years of age, the spirit has spent decades in the estate's beaten-earth-floored cellars, whose stable microclimate governs the slow, even exchange between spirit and Limousin and Vosges forest oak (400–420 litre barrels). The alembic armagnacais produces a single-pass distillate at approximately 56% ABV — far lower than Cognac's double-distillation output — preserving a density of congeners and aromatic complexity that seven and a half decades of oak then sculpt into rancio. The blend anchors on 50% Baco, a hybrid grape now largely restricted to Armagnac, whose structural richness and deep fruit character no all-Ugni Blanc house can replicate. What is exceptional here: 75 years of uninterrupted single-estate maturation, bottled to order so the spirit continues ageing until the last possible moment before release. At this age, dried stone fruit, candied orange, deep spice, and the oxidative walnut-and-mushroom signature of true rancio converge into a finish of extraordinary persistence.