Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Louis Roques Prune Brandy


This prune brandy hails from Armagnac country. While Americans often use the term prune to refer to dried plums, in this case, prune refers to a variety of small, purple plums, sometimes called French prunes in the US.

Louis Roque La Vieille Prune Reserve, 42% abv ($45)

The nose has a strong plum note with some floral notes as well. This is very sweet on the palate, almost liqueur like with a strong plum flavor.

This has good plum flavor and is easy to drink, but it's too sweet for my taste.

UPDATE: Serge Valentin from Whiskyfun provided some interesting background on this brandy:

One thing that you might find interesting is that they started to distill these plums after the phylloxera devastated the vineyards. A kind of temporary ersatz if you will, but people started to like this brandy around the beginning of the 20th century and so they went on making it even after the normal production of wine brandy resumed (Armagnac actually lies around 150km away from Souillac, towards the south-west).

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