Armagnac, called "ardente aygue" or "ardent water" in its early days, is indeed the oldest brandy in the world still distilled today. It has the historical precedence, the ancestry that every other brandy strives to emulate. Armagnac was born from the meeting of three cultures. The Romans introduced the vine, the Gauls, the barrel and the Moors, the alembic, an essential element of Arab medicine. It is 700 years old and often described as “the brandy the French keep for themselves”. In 1310, the Franciscan theologian, scholastic philosopher and cardinal, Prior Vital Du Four, praised the “forty virtues” concerning the body and the spirit in his work of medicine: “To keep health and stay in good shape”. According to him: “It reduces redness and burning of the eyes, prevents them from tearing, cures hepatitis. It cures gout, cankers and fistula by ingestion; restores the paralyzed limb by massage; and heals skin wounds by application. It animates the mind, recalls the past, makes men happy, preserves youth and delays senility. And when it is retained in the mouth, it relaxes the tongue and emboldens the mind, if someone who is occasionally shy himself allows it. "

Throughout the late Middle Ages a real local Armagnac trade begins with a continuous expansion to the modern era. In the 17th century, the region organized itself into three sub-regions: Haut-Armagnac, Bas-Armagnac and Armagnac-Ténarèze, developing a strong commercial product and rapidly increasing its international market. The Dutch were buying the majority of wines from the French Atlantic coast, with the exception of those from Bordeaux which were owned by the English. Soon, the Dutch went up the Garonne and concluded their first contract with the winegrowers of the Gers. Fearing competition, the Bordelais intercepted the convoys under the pretext that no wine other than Bordeaux could be transported by river. If wine is prohibited, alcohol is not, and that was how we began to distill large quantities of wines in the region of Gascony. The Dutch therefore bought large quantities of alcohol in Armagnac which served to enrich and stabilize the wines for transport which they supplied the peoples of northern Europe.

In the 18th century, traders started placing Armagnac in oak barrels for several years in order to compensate for the vagaries of the weather as well as the fluctuations of the market, thus the first aging cellars were born. The American War of Independence also offered new opportunities for traders increasingly concerned with the quality of aging, control of their stocks and maintenance of the characteristics of each lot.