When I took over my father’s hobby transforming cider apples produced on his farm into calvados and aging it without marketing it, my goal was to develop a craft business. Then I realized calvados should be more than a farmhouse spirit — it should be enjoyed by enthusiasts all over the world. So I set to work making calvados better known worldwide to give it the international recognition it deserves.
Conquering the American market is not the easiest for a small producer. It began with the direct sale of a few bottles of 25-year-old calvados to Peter Morell, owner of Morell & Co., the exclusive fine wine and spirits retailer, whom I met at Vinexpo Bordeaux in 1985. Few Americans knew calvados at the time. It quickly seemed to me that success could only come through considerable educational work: tastings, staff training, master classes, and press articles.
For many years, while calling accounts in various parts of the U.S., I was asked the same question: “What is calvados?” The category was known by only a small number of people: famous sommeliers, prestigious wine merchants, and aficionados looking desperately for great, hard-to-find calvados bottles. For most people, calvados was a cooking ingredient used in fall to cook with apples, and for cooking, the cheapest was fine enough. Top calvados bottles happened to be easy to sell if you sampled high-end restaurants, bars, and liquor stores, but calvados producers are artisans, so getting appropriate distribution in the United States is a formidable challenge.
The three-tier system considerably distances the producer from the consumer. Distributors are more responsible for logistics than consumer education. Mergers in production and distribution have contributed to creating very large groups promoting standardized products and shaping consumers’ taste. Such companies are more inclined to promote volume products than a niche product, categories such as whiskey, vodka, tequila, rum, brandy, and gin rather than calvados.
Times are changing. It has been quite a long time since auspices have been so supportive of calvados: steadily increasing demand for hard cider that should drive the growth of cider brandy, growing interest in handcrafted products, the remarkable versatility of calvados, and the cocktail renaissance. Last but not least, sustainability requirements should bring calvados to the forefront of craft spirits. After the publication of several books in France and one in Japan, I dreamt of contributing to a better knowledge of calvados by publishing a calvados book in English. Finding a publishing house for this type of work was little short of an insurmountable challenge. But recent developments shining light back onto calvados eventually convinced the American Distilling Institute to publish my book, The Art of Calvados.
A True Craft Spirit
For some time now, standardization of flavors in food and drinks have pushed a growing number of consumers to look for spirits that are different: that offer authenticity, character, and complexity, that have heritage and a story — handcrafted spirits produced by small distilleries using locally sourced ingredients and materials. Calvados precisely meets these requirements.
Calvados is produced by farmers and small distilleries. Even the largest producers of calvados will be considered “craft” within the spirit industry. The meticulous and artisanal production processes behind each bottle are enforced by the rules of three “Appellations d’origine contrôlées,” specific regions with their own distinct regulations.
Calvados is obtained by distillation of apple and pear cider, which is then matured at least two years in European oak barrels, sometimes ex-wines or ex-spirits. Hard cider is produced from many varieties of small, highly aromatic cider apples: bitter, bittersweet, sweet, and acidic. Pear cider is produced from a smaller number of pear varieties. The fruit mash is allowed to ferment, and alcohol is distilled from it.
Calvados Pays d’Auge is pot distilled, while Calvados Domfrontais is distilled in column stills. When it comes out of the still, calvados is as colorless as water and rich in fruity and floral aromas. It is dry because the sugar of the fruit has been fermented out. Aged in wood, calvados takes on a honey color or a tawny tint and develops a very wide aromatic spectrum showing floral, fruity, and spicy notes. Its typical aromas, coming from oxidized components of the wood while revealing well-preserved fruitiness, make it a unique product. Balance, complexity, and persistence in flavor characterize the best calvados. Calvados styles vary with producers, appellations, age, and cask types. It is by far one of the most complex spirits, opposing the trend toward standardization.
Extraordinary Versatility
From young and easy-sipping to old and complex, calvados shows a remarkable span of styles and applications. It never forgets its rustic roots but it straddles all the new trends with agility.
Adding flair to fine cuisine, young calvados will remain a splendid brandy for cooking whether for flambé, deglazing, or direct addition. The combination of calvados and fresh double cream added to the sauce gives spectacular flavor to a dish. Nothing can match tarte tatin better than calvados ice cream. A longtime favorite ingredient of chefs, calvados is winning over American palates.
Old calvados develops an incredible palette of flavors. Calvados of the highest quality have long found their way onto the drinks trolleys of leading restaurants and been brought to the table at the end of the meal. Poured in a tulip glass and gently warmed in the cupped hand, calvados gives off its full bouquet. It should be savored sip by sip. After dinner, the marriage of calvados and cigars is recognized as one of the most perfect, just like chocolate and calvados have always matched beautifully.
Some aspects of tradition are timeless, such as the legendary “Café Calva” of Parisian bistros, immortalized by great novelists like Eva Maria Remarque. Café Calva is experiencing a revival thanks to bartenders who creatively explore the association of espresso coffee and calvados in Parisian palaces, fashionable cocktail bars, and bistronomic restaurants. Trou Normand — a “Norman hole” — a shot of calvados taken midmeal to make room in the stomach for the rest of the courses, is another time-honored way to drink calvados. But times, and tastes, change. While a decline in the digestif occasion is a concern, the current trend toward cocktails and drinking brandy with dinner is helping bring calvados to new consumers.
Interest in the pairing of food and spirits has developed in recent years. Spirits showing a great complexity of flavors offer many opportunities to marry them to dishes. Thanks to its fruitiness, calvados is one of the best spirits in pairing with food, whether neat or in cocktails. Neat, the dish is then accompanied by a small glass of calvados and a glass of water. Yet due to their higher alcohol strength, spirits are harder to pair with food than cocktails — and cocktails and food pairings are increasingly trendy.
An Amazing Cocktail Base
Apple brandy, commonly dubbed applejack in the U.S., is America’s oldest spirit. Applejack was imbibed as a mixable spirit in the early 1800s, and calvados became one of the finest ingredients for cocktails when the cocktail trend reached France at the end of the 19th century. This trend, amplified with the arrival of allied troops during World War I, flourished during the “Roaring Twenties” that began in 1920 and ended with the Wall Street crash followed by World War II. All along this Golden Age era, calvados was the base of many recipes published in bar and cocktail books.
World War II’s rationing created a shortage of aged spirits — all the more so for calvados due to German occupation and the battle of Normandy in 1944. Calvados almost disappeared from the cocktail scene. Bartenders turned to neutral spirits requiring no aging but delivering no flavor: vodka, which must be odorless and colorless, encountered unbelievable success. In doing so, bartenders gave up sophisticated cocktails and moved to mixed drinks that in fact were mere fruit juice with alcohol added for effect. Wonderful calvados-based recipes created in the Golden Age fell out of fashion.
At the turn of the new millennium, mixology brought cocktails back into fashion using the Golden Age philosophy of sophistication and craft. Mixologists raised the quality of their drinks with carefully selected, fresh ingredients such as fresh fruit juice squeezed daily as well as fresh vegetables, infusions, and homemade syrups. Smaller cocktails provided the opportunity to use much higher quality liquors and offer them at affordable prices. The rise of craft cocktails resulted in a growing demand for high-quality, artisanal beverages that provide a unique drinking experience. The star of the cocktail is the spirit at its base, and the creation of the cocktail is organized around the spirit delivering quality and character.
Mixologists are keener and keener on brandies that offer aromatic complexity, character, body, and length. Out of the twilight, spirits such as calvados have made a comeback and original cocktail recipes inspired by historical ones are created. Today, most of the best bars around the world offer calvados cocktails — and not only the Jack Rose or Angel Face.
Some leading writers have recently declared the craft cocktail movement over. Cocktails have indeed become mainstream. The shortage of qualified bartenders and the use of lower quality products in places that put cocktails on their menu by opportunity are developing a low-end cocktail market, but cocktail bars continue to successfully offer classic or inventive cocktails.
The Most Sustainable Spirit
With so many consumers now taking sustainability into account, calvados has a great advantage over other spirits.
High-stem (standard) apple and pear trees are rustic trees which resist diseases without the need of chemical treatment, thus contributing to biodiversity. Tall standard orchards are true ecosystems. The soil is alive, aerated by microorganisms and worms that turn everything they ingest into a fertilizer of exceptional quality. Bees promote pollination, and songbirds protect fruits by swallowing insects.
Given the magnitude of climate change, any effort to capture carbon pollution must be considered. Calvados might well be the world’s most sustainable spirit if the orchards are managed in a traditional way. At the end of the 1960s, cider apples and perry pears came exclusively from high-stem trees. Unfortunately for the ecosystem, the situation has changed. Beginning in the 80s, the French administration encouraged the planting of intensive orchards — designed to maximize yield on small tracts of land, in this case involving the use of treatment products. For those who commit to this approach, the results are less spectacular than what technical advisors led them to believe they would be.
While calculating the carbon footprint of our distillery, we found that each bottle of calvados produced removed 2.9 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere. Thanks to an orchard planted exclusively with high-stem apple trees and hedges that surround them, calvados production absorbs nearly three times as much carbon as it produces. The explanation lies in the traditional orchard. One hectare of an apple-cider orchard consumes 5.3 tons of CO2, nearly the same quantity of CO2 as one hectare of forest, while one hectare of cereals for making whiskey consumes 2 tons, one hectare of sugarcane 1.8 tons, and one hectare of vineyard more or less one ton. From an environmental point of view, intensive agriculture should not be encouraged.
For all these reasons, calvados should benefit from better recognition. By publishing The Art of Calvados, I hope to contribute to greater knowledge of this amazing product as well as to greater interest in its consumption.
