Fruit & Raw Material

What apples is Calvados made from? Not the eating apples you'd buy at the supermarket, but cider apples, which hardly anyone would want to eat raw. They're small, hard, often tart or bitter, and packed with tannin and aroma.

The varieties are sorted by taste into four groups: sweet, bittersweet, bitter, and sour. Sweet apples provide the sugar, and thus the alcohol. Bitter apples bring tannin and structure, sour ones add freshness. Too much acidity makes the brandy sharp, too much bitterness makes it harsh. The blend each house presses sets it apart from the others.

In the Pays d'Auge, pear plays a supporting role, not the lead. At most 30 percent of the raw material may be perry pears, the rest apples. Perry pears are likewise barely edible on their own, but they lend the brandy a subtle pear note.

Harvest happens in autumn, when the fruit ripens and falls from the tree or is shaken down. Growers gather the fruit from the ground and store it for a few weeks so it can ripen further and develop more aroma before being crushed and pressed. Timing determines sugar and acidity, and a wet autumn can ruin the harvest.

Around Cambremer and Beuvron-en-Auge, the trees typically stand as tall standards in meadows, known as orchard pastures. Cows graze beneath the canopies, and the ground stays as grassland. Many varieties alternate between a heavy year and a light one, so the harvest fluctuates considerably. Preserving these old standard trees takes effort, since machinery struggles to maneuver between them.

Why apples, of all things? Because Normandy's damp, mild climate is too cool and too wet for vines, but ideal for apple trees. Here, what grapes give elsewhere, cidre gives through distillation.