FOMO, or fear of missing out. The psychological trigger is very real and causes people to make irrational decisions because I CAN’T BE THE ONLY PERSON THAT DOESN’T HAVE THIS. But sometimes groupthink causes you to accidently make the right decision because, sometimes, a bunch of people can be right about something. The very concept of collective rightness rubs against my repressed inner-hipster like sandpaper, but I can’t deny that sometimes the masses are right. C’est la vie.
I’m trying to figure out whether the collective bourbon consciousness, i.e. the bourbon borg, is right about the recent L’Encantada Lous Pibous bottlings. L’Encantada is a new(ish) bottler and they offer bottles from a couple of different estates, but Lous Pibous is the estate that’s making all of the waves – we’re talking 50-year storm waves here, Bodhi!
Rather than go into a detailed history and such, I’ll just provide some bullet points – Ryan already provided some details in a previous post and there are plenty of other people out there with way more intimate knowledge about L’Encantada and Lous Pibous than I could ever provide. So, the distilled version is this: Pibous uses Folle Blanche (old-timey, pre-phylloxera) grapes, ages in new French oak, and he may be dead or at least no longer producing. Well I don’t know if he’s actually dead – that’s more gossip than fact and I’m sure someone in the know can correct me on it. Being Armagnac, it’s distilled in a column still (not an alembic charentais pot still). This bottle is apparently from a cask that has had several lots drawn from it over the years and this is the 2017 bottling.
New oak…column still…this is beginning to sound a lot like…bourbon. But how does it taste?
(Tasted from a sample from an overly generous friend who sends me way too many samples)
Nose: big oaky sweetness, almost Stagg-like. Bourbon. Caramel, vanilla, cotton candy, tobacco…a little coconut and citrus.
Palate: more bourbon – tastes just like is smells but also some confectionary sugar, molasses and a little grape, making it mildly distinct but not really that different from bourbon.
Finish: nice length that gracefully dances all over the palate without causing any damage.
Thoughts
Well, I see why bourbon drinkers like Lous Pibous – it tastes like really good bourbon. But that’s not always a compliment. When I go to France, I want to eat French food, not hamburgers and French fries (FRENCH FRIES ARE NOT FRENCH FOOD). So, in reality and the context of this brandy blog, this one is tough to grade. Rather than stack it up against other brandies, I’ll stack it against other bourbons because that is what I think you are getting here. With that in mind, on the bourbon-grade-o-meter I grade this…
Grade: A Minus
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