The traditional Calvados orchard is planted with tall, high-stem trees, with fewer than 300 trees per hectare. Modern orchards are more densely planted with smaller, low-stem trees that are easy to manage and higher yielding, but are more work intensive. High-stem vineyards allow for cow pasturing and other uses among the trees. Many leading producers favor high-stem vineyards, and some use them exclusively.
Types of Calvados
Today, Calvados is made under three different appellations spread across Normandy and dipping occasionally into neighboring departments. The largest, Calvados AOC, makes up 70 percent of production, and is typically distilled in a column still; 35 percent of the apples must come from high-stem vineyards and the spirit must be aged for a minimum of two years. The Calvados Pays d’Auge is the oldest AOC, created in 1942. It’s a smaller area, has the same aging requirements, but is more stringent regarding apple sources, 45 percent of which must come from high-stem orchards. Calvados Pays d’Auge, uniquely, must also be double distilled in a pot still. While other Calvados can have substantial amounts of pears used in their production, Pays d’Auge limits pears to 30 percent of the fruit used.
In contrast, the newer, more southerly Calvados Domfrontais AOC, created in 1997, requires a minimum of 30 percent pears; the area is dominated by high-stem pear orchards. Calvados Domfrontais is produced using a column still and must age for at least three years before bottling; despite the longer aging requirements, the column still and high pear content typically yields a fresher, lighter style of Calvados.
All the Calvados appellations are open-minded regarding labeling rules, allowing age and quality statements on products that meet the given requirements. There is enough room within the regulations for producers to offer specialty products, so Calvados is able to keep up with trends found among other brown spirits. For example, Calvados can be aged in different types of vessels, such as older barrels left over from a previous generation, and bottled separately.
Christian Drouin has collaborated with distilleries such as Hine Cognac, Calle 23 Tequila, and Caroni Rum to use their barrels to finish Drouin Calvados bottlings. Drouin, Groult, and others have stepped outside the Calvados appellation to produce unaged apple brandies as well. Some producers have also introduced cask strength Calvados, bottled without being reduced back to 40 percent alcohol.
Small Producers, Small Environmental Impact
Compared to other French brandies, Calvados is well-suited to fit in with the craft ethos of America’s brandy scene, with a wide range of medium and small producers. “Calvados is still a very craft category,” says Drouin. “Even the bigger Calvados producers are very small compared to the Cognac or whiskey industry.” Calvados overall includes 8,000 hectares of orchards, making it just over a tenth the size of Cognac. Nonetheless, Calvados includes about three hundred producers, a greater number than in the more famous grape brandy region.
Drouin says Calvados’s green credentials also deserve to be better known. “We examined the carbon footprint of our company, and we calculated that every time we produce a bottle of Calvados, the equivalent of three kilos of CO2 is absorbed,” says Drouin. “So it’s probably the only spirit in the world which can show, without any effort, a negative carbon footprint.” According to the IDAC, Calvados orchards on average sequester 35 to 50 tons of carbon per hectare over a 25-year period, and the orchards also provide four times the habitat for bees and other pollinators than other field crops.