What do VS, VSOP, XO and Hors d’âge mean on armagnac?

In its explanation of the label, the BNIA names four terms: VS at least one year, VSOP at least four years, Napoléon at least six years and Hors d’âge at least ten years.

• VS, or three stars: the youngest eau-de-vie has lain at least 1 year on oak
• VSOP: at least 4 years
• Napoléon: at least 6 years
• Hors d’âge: at least 10 years

Fine is an older French designation that you see mainly on the simpler bottles. If a number such as 12 or 25 years appears instead of a letter designation, that number applies to the youngest eau-de-vie in the bottle.

The BNIA gives two periods for XO: the label explanation says six years, its own page on XO and Hors d’âge says ten years.

Anyone who wants to know for sure how old the contents are therefore looks not at the three letters but at an age or a vintage year on the label. Many houses add that themselves, precisely because XO is a broad concept in practice. For cognac, the lower limit for XO is now ten years; for armagnac, the sources of the trade association differ.

The age always applies to the youngest eau-de-vie in the bottle, not to the average of the blend.

A VSOP may therefore also contain much older eau-de-vie; the four years is a lower limit, not a description. That is exactly why two bottles with the same letters can differ considerably. With a millésime this does not apply: everything there comes from one harvest year.

The maturation of armagnac is counted from 1 April of the year after the harvest.

That is in the cahier des charges of the AOC: at least one year under oak, counted from 1 April. Distillation must be finished by 31 March after the harvest at the latest, so the count starts just after the last distilling day of the season. The wood must be sessile oak, pedunculate oak or a cross of the two.

A year on a bottle of armagnac is the harvest year of the grapes, not the year of bottling.

Such a bottle is called a millésime and contains only eau-de-vie from that single year. The BNIA requires at least ten years of maturation for a millésime. Because armagnac does not mature any further in glass, the bottling year on the bottle tells you how long the contents spent in wood: bottling year minus harvest year.

Blanche Armagnac does not belong in the list of age statements, because that armagnac does not go into wood.

The cahier des charges requires at least three months in an inert vessel for Blanche Armagnac. As a result, the bottle stays clear. A Blanche thus never carries VS, VSOP, XO or Hors d’âge.