Calvados

Since I discovered it many years ago, one of my favorite digestifs has been calvados, which is a Normandy brandy. It's very similar to cognac and armagnac, but it's made from apples instead of grapes.

My bottle of 15-year-plus Marcel Breton calvados.

Calvados shares its name with the French administrative department in Normandy where it was supposedly first made. According to Wikipédia, the first written account of calvados appeared in the sixteenth century.

A glass of rich, smokey calva.

To make calvados, apples are pressed and the juice is fermented into cider, which is then distilled into an eau-de-vie. The brandy spends at least two years in oak before it is bottled. I read that there are about 200 varieties of apples that are used to make calvados, and that some producers blend up to 100 types to make their particular version.

Northwestern France. Magny-le-Désert is where we bought the calvados. Saint-Aignan (where we live) is about a four hour drive to the southeast.

In Spring 2005, Ken and I drove up to Normandy for a few days. On our way back to Saint-Aignan, we stopped in a town called Magny-le-Désert to look for a calvados producer that we had seen featured on a show we watch on Cuisine TV. We really didn't think we'd find it, as we weren't certain of the name or its location.

Mr. Breton's sign, hidden behind foliage. It's a wonder we found it!
Photo by Ken.

After driving around a bit, we actually stumbled on the place! We drove in; it was basically a house and a barn. We knocked on the door of the house, but nobody seemed to be home. Just as we were about to give up, a older man came to the door. We asked him if he sold calvados and he invited us inside to taste some.

Mr. Breton's house. There's an historic stone lintel above the door, recuperated from a much older building. Photo by Ken.

He brought us into the dining room of his house, which was fairly modern, and we sat at a huge oak table which was obviously the family table. Behind him was a huge cabinet filled with glasses and bottles. When we told him we had seen his place on television, he smiled and pointed outdoors to where the taping had taken place (the show typically has a bunch of local farmers and growers gathered around a big barbecue featuring all their food and drink). The episode was made at least three years earlier, and we had seen a re-run.

We tasted at least three good-sized glasses of calvados. It was just before lunch and there we were, sipping brandy on an empty stomach. He drank right along with us of course. He got to telling us stories about his experiences there during the war, what life was like under German occupation and how it was when the Americans came through. He showed us some old photos, if I remember correctly.

He told us he had to get going because he had a doctor's appointment to keep, so we bought a few bottles and headed out to find some lunch. The bottle pictured here, the one that I opened on New Year's Day, is one that we brought back from his place. It was at least fifteen years old when we bought it, which would date it to around 1990.

When I tasted it, I was amazed. Normally the calvados I drink is very fruity, but this one tasted like it spent a bit more than two years on oak. It was rich and smokey flavored, with just a hint of the old apples that made it.

I'll wager it won't last very long now that it's opened.