Baco, François, was, like bouschet, a nurseryman who saw his name live on in the names of some of the most successful of the vine varieties he bred. Baco’s specialities were french hybrids and his most successful was Baco Blanc, sometimes called Baco 22A, which was hybridized in 1898 and was, for much of the 20th century until the late 1970s, the prime ingredient in armagnac—a role now occupied by ugni blanc but previously occupied by folle blanche, although the French vineyard census of 2011 still noted 661 ha/1,633 acres of the variety, mainly in armagnac country.
