Who Makes Armagnac? The Producers of Gascony

Armagnac is made by a few hundred family farms, merchant houses and cooperatives in Gascony: the BNIA's figures for 2023 counted 537 active producers and 169 active négociants. Only 40 houses owned a still, so many growers bring in an itinerant distiller. On many of these farms the vines share the land with Floc de Gascogne, still wine, cereals or ducks.

Every cask we bottle is chosen directly from one of these producers or négociants, so how they divide the work, and whose name ends up on the label, is close to home for us.

How many Armagnac producers are there?

The count to start with is the one from the Bureau National Interprofessionnel de l'Armagnac (BNIA), the trade body for independent and cooperative producers, négociants (merchant houses that age and trade), distillers and brokers. Its key figures for 2023, presented in May 2024, listed 537 active producers and 169 active négociants, along with 70 stills and 40 houses that owned a still.

Those numbers count businesses holding Armagnac in stock, which is how the region measures production: eau-de-vie aging in cask. The BNIA has checked these age accounts since it took its current name in 1946. Growers are counted separately. For 2018–19 the BNIA reported 682 active producer accounts and 164 active négociant accounts, plus 733 winegrowers holding rights to 2,420 hectares of Armagnac vineyard.

Fewer producers, then, and about the same number of houses. Press coverage of the BNIA's July 2026 general assembly gives newer figures, but the two papers disagree: Sud Ouest reported 430 producers and 180 négociants, and Le Sillon 500 producers and 160 négociants, distillers and brokers. Until the BNIA publishes its own update, we go by the 2023 numbers.

Growers, distillers, négociants and cooperatives

Every bottle passes through four jobs, and one business may do all of them or only one. A grower (vigneron) tends the vines and makes a wine for distilling. A distiller turns that wine into eau-de-vie, normally by March 31 after the harvest. Someone ages it in oak, and that has to happen inside the appellation, because the AOC applies only to eaux-de-vie aged and finished in its area. Then someone bottles and sells it, under an estate's name or a house's brand. We walk through the steps themselves in how Armagnac is made.

The split between making and selling is uneven. The official specification records that in 2012 growers and cooperatives produced 70% of Armagnac and négociants 30%, out of 19,000 hectoliters of pure alcohol. France's 2020 heritage inventory, citing 2018 data, describes the commercial side the other way round: négociant houses 72%, cooperatives 18% and independent producers 10%. The years and measures differ, but the picture is consistent: growers and cooperatives make most of the spirit, and the houses sell most of it.

Armagnac is a family business

France's Ministry of Culture, in its 2020 inventory of Armagnac know-how, calls production "a family culture." Most active producers learned from a father or grandfather and then took over the family estate, some reorganizing as a GAEC, a French farm partnership.

The merchant houses go back a long way too. In the 19th century, the appellation's specification says, regional négociants built cellars dedicated to Armagnac and invested in its quality. Bottle sales came much later, after the Second World War, a story we cover in Armagnac history.

Well-known Armagnac houses and estates, A to Z

These are established names you're likely to see on labels and wine lists, listed alphabetically with no ranking. Founding dates are as each house, or the named source, gives them. Hundreds of smaller farms that sell under their own names aren't listed.

• Castarède, Lavardac: négociant house that says it has traded Armagnac since 1832, from cellars at Pont de Bordes, and calls itself the first declared trading house.
• Château de Laubade, Sorbets (Bas-Armagnac): estate built in 1870 and owned by the Lesgourgues family for three generations, it says, with its own still built in 1974.
• Château de Ravignan, Perquie (Landes): family estate that AFP reported in 2014 had produced Armagnac since the 18th century, using a visiting distiller's still.
• Château du Tariquet (Gers): bought in 1912 by Pierre Artaud when it made only Armagnac, per Terre de Vins; by 2025 it produced far more Côtes de Gascogne wine than Armagnac.
• Château Garreau, Labastide-d'Armagnac: family estate run by Carole Garreau since 2006, one of eight farms behind the creation of Floc de Gascogne in 1970, per La Dépêche.
• Darroze (Landes): négociant that says Francis Darroze selected his first three barrels of estate Armagnac in 1974; it names estate, vintage and bottling date on each label.
• Dartigalongue, Nogaro: house that says Pascal Dartigalongue settled in Nogaro in 1838 to sell Armagnac, and describes itself as an éleveur (a house that ages eau-de-vie).
• Delord, Lannepax: family house that dates its story to 1893, when Prosper Delord took his still from farm to farm; his sons founded Delord Frères as producers, distillers and négociants in 1932.
• Janneau, Condom: house that dates its creation to 1851 and has been owned by the Spirit France group since 2014, according to its history page.
• Laberdolive, Labastide-d'Armagnac: family estate that the local tourist office says has been at the Domaine de Jaurrey since 1893, distilling its wine in two wood-fired stills.
• Les Hauts de Montrouge (Bas-Armagnac): cooperative founded in 1963 that says it groups 52 winegrowing families and distills, ages and bottles in-house.

To place these names on the map, see our guide to the Armagnac regions.

Does every Armagnac producer have its own distillery?

No. Owning a still is the exception. In 2023 the BNIA counted 70 stills and 40 houses with their own, against 706 active producers and négociants (537 plus 169). The specification, using 2012 data, says most grower-producers call on itinerant distillers, whose stills travel from property to property through autumn and winter. The heritage inventory adds professional distillers and cooperative distilleries.

An AFP report from November 2014 shows what that looks like. Marc Saint-Martin, a grower and Armagnac producer at Réans, towed a copper still that had belonged to his grandfather from farm to farm, serving about sixty clients from October to the end of January. At Château de Ravignan the still ran continuously for more than two and a half days to process 260 hectoliters of wine. The paperwork records who did it: each distillation declaration must give the distiller's name and address.

Cooperatives let small growers share a cellar and a still. Les Hauts de Montrouge says it groups 52 winegrowing families and handles winemaking, blending, distilling, cask aging and bottling in-house, alongside wine, Floc and liqueurs. Larger family houses run fixed stills: Laubade distills in a still it had built in 1974, and AFP reported in 2025 on the stills at the Delord family's site in Lannepax.

What else Armagnac producers make

On many farms the vines are the smaller part of the land. The Armagnac specification describes a landscape of woods and mixed crop-and-livestock farming (polyculture-élevage) in which the vine is often a minority. The heritage inventory says Armagnac was historically one product of farms that also grew cereals and raised pigs and poultry.

Floc de Gascogne

Floc de Gascogne, an AOC since 1990, is a liqueur wine made by adding Armagnac to grape must to stop its fermentation, finishing at 16–18% ABV. The rules require the must and the Armagnac to come from the same farm, which ties Floc to producers who also make Armagnac.

Côtes de Gascogne wine

Many estates make still wine as well. Côtes de Gascogne was recognized as a vin de pays in 1982 and became a protected geographical indication (IGP) in 2009. Its specification says the vineyard, rebuilt in the 20th century mostly for distilling, moved toward still wine as alcohol consumption fell. Tariquet shows how far that can go: Terre de Vins reported in 2025 that it worked more than 1,125 hectares of vines and made about 8 million bottles of Côtes de Gascogne a year, against 120,000 bottles of Armagnac.

The balance between wine and brandy can shift from one year to the next: Le Journal du Gers, reporting the BNIA's figures, concluded that some producers chose to distill more and sell less wine in the 2023–24 campaign, a choice our rarity guide looks at more closely.

Ducks, cereals and farm stays

Gascony is foie gras country. INAO's record for the Canard à foie gras du Sud-Ouest IGP, recognized by the EU in June 2000, traces the tradition to the 16th-century arrival of maize, used to fatten geese and ducks. Some farms do all of it: the Ferme de Gagnet in Mézin says it raises its own ducks "from the first day to the jar," distills Armagnac Ténarèze from its ten hectares of vines, and rents out two farm gîtes. Delord's bottling line also fills jars of Agen prunes in Armagnac.

For the wider picture, the 2020 agricultural census counted 6,680 farms in the Gers, which holds 245 of the appellation's communes. Field-crop farms made up more than half, more than 500 were classed as vineyards, and 1,600 had diversified into on-farm processing, tourist lodging, catering or energy. Those figures cover every farm in the department, not only Armagnac producers.

How we work with Armagnac producers

We work with producers and négociants in all three sub-regions, Bas-Armagnac, Ténarèze and Haut-Armagnac, and every cask we release is chosen directly from the source. You can read about the families we work with.

Most of the producers we see make only a few barrels each year and hold fewer than 250 in their cellars. That scale is a big part of why Armagnac is rare, and it suits the way we bottle: one barrel per release, at cask strength with no additives. If you're new to the category, start with what Armagnac is, or go straight to our current single-cask releases.