Tasting notes Serge Valentin: 90 points (Whiskyfun.com)

This is one of the very best houses, making armagnac the traditional way. For example, they distill and fill at 52% vol. and never add any caramel, neither do they reduce their spirits. So, when it’s 44%, it’s 44% ‘natural’, no tricks or fake decimals here.

Colour: amber.

Nose: rather more oak than expected (dry pipe tobacco, black tea) and really a lot of chocolate and ganache, then apricot coulis and a drop of miso and earth, with a growing umaminess (apologies). This little bastard (reiterated apologies) takes its time.

Mouth: almost brutal at first, pungent, full of earth, ueber-ristretto, bitter chocolate (like 110% cocoa - ha) and paprika. Good news, the fruits are chiming in after just ten seconds (still, that’s ten seconds) especially sloe and damsons, but the bitter chocolate and the coffee are keeping the upper hand all along. They could almost make a decaf’ version of this little baby.

Finish: long, dry, on more or less the same flavours.

Comments: no coffee needed with your digestif, it’s ‘inside’. More seriously, love this fairly brutal one, but it is a little segmenting. I am in the right segment, I think.