We’re in Pays d’Auge, Normandy, rolling through the countryside on La Route du Cidre. Drinking and driving is bad, but luckily for us, drinking and riding in a gigantic, modern tour bus is perfectly fine – especially in France. Bordeaux has its “Routes du Vin.” Burgundy has “La Route des Grands Crus.” Ah, oui. But Normandy has “La Route du Cidre.” And from cidre, we get Calvados!
In Pays d’Auge, cows graze on lush, rolling hills of green fields. Apple orchards line back-roads connecting one small village after another. We stopped at a village called Beaumont-en-Auge to have a look around.
Beaumont-en-Auge
Beaumont-en-Auge isn’t much more than the intersection of two country roads. Half-timbered buildings line the roads for a block or so in each direction. It’s like a post-card waiting for someone to come along with a camera. There’s a little park, a kaleidoscope shop, and a statue of Pierre-Simon Laplace.
Whoa. One of the greatest mathematicians the world has ever known – the creator of the Laplace Transform – came from this tiny village? I wonder if he’s aware of the torment and frustration his creation still brings to second-year engineering and physics students who lament, “Why? Why? Why didn’t I pay more attention in that math class I took last semester?”
La Fromage Normande
In this part of Normandy, it’s all about cheese and apples. The most famous Normandy cheese is camembert. There’s an official appellation for it, so if you buy a little wooden box of camembert with the AOC label, it came from only one place: Camembert, Normandy. Other only-from-Normandy cheeses are Livarot, Pont-l’Évêque, and Neufchâtel.
It’s different back home, eh? If I buy some Monterey Jack cheese, do I think it actually came from Monterey? Heck no. It could have just as well have come from Paraguay as Monterey. But the camembert I bought? I know exactly where it was made.
Apple orchards are everywhere in Pays d’Auge. Judging by the number of cider-making operations we’ve passed, a lot of those apples wind up as cider. Just like wine is made by fermenting grape juice, cider is made by fermenting apple juice. The alcohol content of cider is usually akin to that of beer. My favorite thing about cider is that it’s used to make something else: calvados.
Calvados!
Calvados is an eau-de-vie, (pronounced “oh de vee”). Back home, we have our own names for eau de vie – “spirits,” “booze,” “hooch.” “Eau de vie” sounds a wee bit classier, eh? It translates as “water of life.” Ah, oui.
Calvados distilleries line the Route du Cidre the way wineries line Highway 29 in California’s Napa Valley. We stopped at one of the big ones – Château du Breuil.
Château du Breuil
Château du Breuil is no mom-and-pop operation. It’s been designed to entertain and educate the masses in all things calvados. The grounds are beautiful. A stream meanders through manicured lawns bordering an apple orchard.
There’s a real chateau at Château du Breuil – a nice one, too. (Most of them are, eh?) The distillery is here, and old wooden buildings where they keep the good stuff in oak barrels while it ages. The wooden buildings themselves seem to have been aged to perfection.
A guide met us and led us down a path through the grounds. We entered a room where he explained how calvados is made. They start by harvesting apples, turning them into cider, then letting the cider age a bit.
When it’s ready, they run the cider through a still to remove some of the water, concentrating the alcohol in the juice. Then they distill it again. Now they’re getting close to what they’re looking for.
La Part des Anges
The double-distilled juice is put into oak barrels to rest. During this time, the most volatile compounds will find their way out of the barrels. They’ll lose something like two percent of the contents of the barrel. They call the missing part “the angels’ share” – “la part des anges.”
Our guide led us to another building that looked like a big barn. He had a surprise for us. Inside, oak barrels were neatly stacked around a large room. Someone dimmed the lights. It was cool, dark, and quiet inside.
Then a light show started, set to music. I’m at a loss as to how explain it, really, but it was awesome. I assume lasers were used somehow. It was way high tech. The music was great. The cool thing was that we were having this high-tech experience in the most unlikely place, way out in the boonies, surrounded by fields and apple orchards.
There must have been subliminal messaging going on during that show, because afterwards I was really ready to have some calvados. It tastes amazing, of course. Think of the finest cognac, (or something similar), with subtle apple notes coming through. Did I just say, “apple notes”? I guess the effect of that light show hasn’t worn off yet!
To be continued…
