Is Armagnac on the rocks a no-no?

I don’t like ice in any drink apart from a nice G&T

I can honestly say I’ve never drunk armagnac on the rocks, nor would I personally consider it, but each to their own. Much like whisky, I’ve been offered with and without, for me it is always without, as it comes out of the bottle !

I guess the most heinous crime is dumping it into a glass of coke :roll_eyes:

You’ve paid for it, so drink it how you want to.

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Depends how old it is :slightly_smiling_face:

You cannot be serious.
I’ll agree some whiskys really benefit from a drop of Malvern water to open them up.

But if you’re adding water to Armagnac then you’ve never had good Armagnac.

(Said she who is practically teetotal but does have a fave Armagnac that now costs ÂŁ100 a bottle)

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One of the best cocktails I’ve ever had was a small, rough cube of brown sugar in the bottom of a champagne flute, a twist of orange skin, a nip of Armagnac topped up by your favorite bubbly - yum! No ice in sight!

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@toryroo
That with a couple of drops of Angostura on the sugar-lump is THE Champagne cocktail (often with Cognac rather than Armagnac)- I had them at my 21st birthday party and people who were unaccustomed to them got very drunk indeed and fell over.

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The serious Maltheads insist on adding water from the same source as the distillery used to make their tipple, but they’re no crazier than Hi-Fi fans who buy £100/metre speaker cables.

Interesting whiskey fact: Most single malts have some of the whiskey oils filtered out as the Yanks don’t like to see the “diesel spill” effect when they put ice in their drinks.

That’s a “Champagne Cocktail” I believe, normally made with cognac, but equally at home with armagnac.
As to the original question, to a purist ice in armagnac is sacrilege, but if that’s how you like it, why not? My wife once horrified a waiter in Tournus by adding ginger ale to her armagnac. We never saw the poor fellow again.

Sorry, but the authority of your post is seriously undermined by use of ‘whiskey’ (sic) - that’s the Irish stuff.

The real crazies are the ones that pay $7k a metre

Most whisky sold about 40% alcohol by volume though to be fair water needs to be added to cask strength whisky to get it down to about that anyway, it’s too strong to taste it properly much above 40%.

I worked in the bottling industry for 25 years and the smell of alcohol after visiting the bottling halls all these years has put me off drink, especially whisky.
The strongest bottled single malt cask whisky is around 94%, but cask strength can vary from 105-140%.
The worst smell at a production line was vodka followed by Pernod Ricard, stunk your clothing out and you had to take a change of clothing with you or you got some very funny looks walking around in town.
Funnily Armagnac never smelt like it tasted at a bottling line, all you could smell was plums and vanilla.

I blame Autocorrect.

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Presumably that’s proof (2x ABV) as you can’t have a liquid which is 140% alcohol - so 52.5 to 70% alcohol by volume.

Proof obviously :wink: