L'Encantada Private Barrel
29 Year Old Armagnac
Barrel #23
Domaine Lassalle
Distilled: 1991, Bottled 2022
Cask Strength, No Additives, NCF
45.6%

Vincent Cornu, founder of L'Encantada will tell you that his Armagnac barrels are like his babies. And when we tasted this Lassalle cask, it was almost like he didn't want to sell it to us. Lassalle stopped producing Armagnac in 1992. We were able to get one of the last 1992 barrels in 2021. It was phenomenal. We never thought we'd get our hands on an older barrel from 1991. This may be one of the last private cask Lassalle's they release.

Check out our excellent session with Vincent and Nic Palazzi of PMSpirits (be warned there's a fair amount of French with Nic translating) where Vincent breaks down the lineage of this cask. He had an arrangement with Lassalle to continue aging it in their cellar, and it stayed there until it was about 25 years old. At that point Vincent felt that it could benefit from more age, but didn't want any more oak influece, so he transferred it to an older cask and moved it to his (less damp) cellar at L'Encantada. There it finished out maturing and finally Vincent allowed it to be bottled.

The all-natural color is phenomenally dark, like you left the teabag in you english breakfast tea from the morning. The nose hits you with tart cherries, a big hit of rancio, stewed prunes, & raisins. Then as it opens up there's pipe tobacco, dark chocolate - like those bitter chocolate nibs for baking, and cloves. The nose finishes with black licorice and some wild exotic spices.

The palate is so rich and round and warm. More fruits and wood, leather and spice. It's a really wide taste with deep fruit, but an overall warm bitterness that's really unique.

The finish goes back to cherries and prunes, with a hint of that black licorice remaining in the back of your mouth.

This is a really special barrel, folks. I hope you've been collecting these incredibly good bottlings from L'Encantada. The old ones are starting to get rare and they are absolutely spectatular. We're so excited to be offering this one to you. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Cheers/ The Beasts