Where Is Armagnac Made? Gascony and Its 3 Sub-Regions

Bas-Armagnac is the westernmost of the three sub-regions of the Armagnac appellation in Gascony, southwest France, and by the BNIA's figures it holds about two-thirds of the vineyard area identified for Armagnac. Armagnac itself is a French wine brandy made in parts of the Gers, the Landes, and Lot-et-Garonne. Ténarèze lies in the middle and Haut-Armagnac to the east, as the map below shows.

We work with producers and négociants (merchant houses that age and blend Armagnac) in all three sub-regions. Soil and rainfall both change steadily from west to east across them, and that is where the differences start.

Where is Armagnac made?

Armagnac is made in Gascony, the old province bounded by the Garonne to the north, the Atlantic to the west, and the Pyrenees to the south. The appellation sits inland, with rounded hills in the west and more sharply cut valleys in the east. The specification lists every commune in the area: 245 in the Gers, 29 in the Landes, and 18 in Lot-et-Garonne.

Grapes must be harvested, made into wine, and distilled in those communes, and the spirit aged and finished inside the area. A handful of communes, including Mont-de-Marsan in the Landes, count for aging and finishing only, so grapes grown there can't become Armagnac.

Three towns help you find your bearings. Eauze, which the BNIA calls the capital of Bas-Armagnac, has a place in the specification's history section: in 1310, it says, Vital du Four, prior of Eauze, described the "40 virtues" of aygue ardente ("burning water"). Condom anchors Ténarèze, and Auch sits in Haut-Armagnac. Our Armagnac history guide tells the story of the 1310 text.

Don't picture wall-to-wall vines. The specification describes a landscape of woods and mixed farming in which the vine is often a minority. The BNIA counts about 20,000 hectares of vines across the area, shared with Côtes de Gascogne wine and Floc de Gascogne, and only about 5,200 of them are identified for Armagnac. Our guide to Armagnac's rarity explains what that small footprint means for supply.

Armagnac regions: why there are three

The specification says Bas-Armagnac, Armagnac-Ténarèze, and Haut-Armagnac follow one another from west to east and correspond to distinct natural environments. Two gradients run across the map in the same direction.

The first is climate. The west is oceanic, with regular rain and no truly dry summer. The east is more continental, with summer drought that lasts until late-season storms. INAO gives annual rainfall of about 1,000 mm (39 inches) at the southwest edge and 700 mm (28 inches) at Auch. The BNIA adds that the Landes pine forest softens the ocean's influence in the west, while the east feels Mediterranean air on the southeasterly autan wind.

The second is soil. In the west, the sables fauves ("tawny sands"), a marine formation, carry acidic, silty-to-sandy soils called boulbènes. Moving east, these give way to molasse, a clay-rich formation with hard limestone bands. Its soils are deep clay (terreforts) or shallow, stony limestone (peyrusquets). The two formations overlap in the center.

The two gradients offset each other. Clay soils hold water best, and they lie in the east, where summer rain is lowest. The specification credits that balance with giving vines a steady water supply across the zone, which suits the productive vines and the acidic, low-alcohol wines that make good brandy. Our guide to how Armagnac is made picks up the story at the still.

The lines themselves are old. A decree of 25 May 1909 delimited the production area and its three sub-regions, and AOC recognition followed in 1936. To put a sub-region on the label, all the grapes must come from that sub-region's listed communes. Wine-making, distillation, aging, and finishing can happen anywhere in the wider area. A spirit made from grapes grown in more than one sub-region is labeled simply Armagnac.

Bas-Armagnac: the western heartland

Bas-Armagnac covers western Gers and neighboring communes in the Landes. Its towns include Eauze, Nogaro, and Cazaubon in the Gers, and Labastide-d'Armagnac in the Landes. Labastide is a bastide, one of the planned "new towns" that appeared across Gascony in the 13th century. The specification lists about 90 communes in the sub-region.

This is the land of the tawny sands. The BNIA describes poor, acidic ground of sands tinted by iron oxides, mixed with silty boulbènes. It is the wettest and most oceanic part of the appellation, and the lowest: the BNIA puts average elevations at 60–120 meters (about 200–390 feet), against 150–200 meters (about 490–660 feet) in Haut-Armagnac.

Bas means "low," and the name predates the appellation. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica records that by 1789 the province was split into "High or White Armagnac," with Auch as its capital, and "Low or Black Armagnac." The BNIA ties the "black" nickname to the dark ponds and the oak and pine woods in Bas-Armagnac's valleys.

The sands show up in the vineyard's history too. France's 2020 heritage inventory of Armagnac-making says phylloxera, the vine pest that ravaged the region, hit Bas-Armagnac less hard. And Baco blanc, the grape François Baco selected in 1898, is well adapted to sandy soils; the BNIA calls it particularly suited to the sands of Bas-Armagnac.

Bas-Armagnac is the biggest sub-region by vineyard. The BNIA puts it at 67% of the vineyard area identified for Armagnac, and one 2022 BNIA article says 70%. In the glass, the BNIA describes Bas-Armagnac eaux-de-vie as light, fruity, and delicate. That's a tendency, and producer, grape, cask, and age can pull any single barrel elsewhere.

Ténarèze: the transitional middle

Ténarèze (legally Armagnac-Ténarèze) covers northwestern Gers and the south of Lot-et-Garonne. It centers on Condom, with Vic-Fezensac and Montréal in the Gers and Nérac and Mézin in Lot-et-Garonne. The specification lists about 75 communes. Condom has been home to the Musée de l'Armagnac since 1954.

The sub-region shares its name with a road. The Ténarèze was an old north–south route across Gascony, first recorded in 1224, according to the Nouvelle-Aquitaine regional heritage inventory. The meaning of the name is disputed: the BNIA glosses it as "on the ridge," while 19th-century scholars traced it to the Latin for "Caesar's road."

The same inventory judges that a track from Eauze to the Garonne probably existed in prehistory, and it records tolls collected on the road by the Albret lords. Local tradition, repeated by the Gers tourism board, says the route kept to the ridge to avoid fords and toll bridges, though the inventory documents a crossing of the Gélise at Barbaste, first by ford and later by bridge.

Rivers here run north to the Garonne, among them the Baïse, the Osse, and the Gers. The BNIA notes that the Baïse once carried Armagnac in casks and that work to canalize it began in 1808. The soils mix boulbènes with clay-limestone terreforts. INAO notes that the tawny sands thin out and disappear east of the Ténarèze, while limestone soils spread eastward from it.

The BNIA puts Ténarèze at about 32% of the vineyard area identified for Armagnac. It describes Ténarèze eaux-de-vie as tending to be fuller-bodied ("often powerful," in its French text) and as spirits that can benefit from long aging.

Haut-Armagnac: large and sparsely planted

Haut-Armagnac covers the east and south of the appellation, and under the specification it lies entirely in the Gers. Auch, Lectoure, Fleurance, and Marciac all fall inside it. It has the most communes of the three, more than 120, but its vineyards are thinly spread.

Haut means "high," and the old nickname "White Armagnac" survives. The BNIA links it to the limestone outcrops and marly limestone hills, in contrast to Bas-Armagnac's dark woods. Auch also anchors the political story: the 1911 Britannica traces the County of Armagnac to about 960, and by 1789 Auch was the capital of High Armagnac.

According to the BNIA, vine growing in Haut-Armagnac expanded in the 19th century, during a period of strong demand, and only a few producers still make Armagnac there. The BNIA describes the land as spread out, with limestone and clay-limestone hills, boulbènes in some valleys, and sparse vineyards. The climate is the most continental of the three, with the autan wind sometimes lending a Mediterranean feel.

A 2025 BNIA article says Haut-Armagnac's vines cover about 2% of the appellation's surface. Unlike the other two sub-regions, it has no style note from the BNIA, so we judge each Haut-Armagnac cask on its own merits and on how well it represents its place.

Armagnac regions compared

Bas-Armagnac XO, VSOP, and Hors d'Âge: reading the label

You'll often see a sub-region paired with an age category, as in "Bas-Armagnac XO" or "Ténarèze VSOP." The two parts answer different questions. The sub-region says where the grapes grew, and the specification requires it to appear in the same field of view as the Armagnac appellation. The age category describes the youngest spirit in the bottle: VSOP means at least four years in oak, XO at least ten, and Hors d'Âge ("beyond age") more than ten.

So a Bas-Armagnac XO is an XO made entirely from Bas-Armagnac grapes, whose youngest eau-de-vie has spent at least ten years in oak. The full set of age terms, vintages included, is in our guide to what Armagnac is.

How we think about region when we choose a cask

A sub-region tells you where the grapes grew. It doesn't tell you the grape or the still. All ten authorized grapes and both permitted distillation methods apply across the whole appellation, so two casks from the same sub-region can taste very different.

That's one reason we buy one cask at a time. We work with producers and négociants in Bas-Armagnac, Ténarèze, and Haut-Armagnac, and we choose every cask directly from the source, partly for how well it represents the place it came from. Each OADE release is that single barrel, bottled at cask strength with no additives, so what you taste is one producer's spirit from one place. To meet the people behind it, read who makes Armagnac, or browse our current single-cask releases.