Boozehound - Jason Wilson [89]
I tell that anecdote chiefly because I’d like to suggest that more restaurants take better care in developing their after-dinner drinks menus. Where else are people supposed to learn to taste fine, top-end spirits? Yet there frequently is a lack of creativity or even thought put into these offerings. A fine restaurant that would never think of putting a middling bottle on its wine list or a banal drink on its cocktail menu will too often stock the after-dinner menu with boring, overpriced staples. How many have interesting eaux-de-vie, or aged rums, or extra-añejo tequilas, or cask-aged Norwegian aquavits, or amari, or fortified wines that aren’t port or sherry? Perhaps the after-dinner drinks menu is too often left to the sommeliers, many of whom—even some of the best, it must be said—suffer from a lack of spirits knowledge. Maybe the bartender should usurp this job from the sommelier. Anyway, that night in the airport hotel started me on a journey that resulted in Calvados becoming one of my favorite spirits—and perhaps my absolute favorite during the colder months.
I will admit I was predisposed to liking Calvados. I’d already had an apple brandy in my life: New Jersey’s finest homegrown spirit, Laird’s straight apple brandy. I came of age on Laird’s applejack (aka Jersey Lightning), a blend of apple brandy and neutral spirits that is the less expensive cousin of apple brandy. I have a friend, Larry, who grew up near the Laird’s farm and actually visited it on a fourth-grade field trip. And so, when I sip Laird’s apple brandy—even the excellent aged versions—I’m still taken back to concealed flasks at bonfire pep rallies and homecoming games.
I find it unfortunate that applejack and apple brandy are not more widely embraced by contemporary drinkers. Applejack is essential in two classic cocktails, the Jack Rose and the Pink Lady. And back in the eighteenth century, it played a key role in our young nation’s drinking life. A mug of applejack was a fairly common morning tipple for the colonists, and Laird’s, in business since 1780, is the country’s oldest distillery. George Washington wrote the Laird family asking for its applejack recipe, and Abraham Lincoln served applejack for twelve cents a glass in his Springfield, Illinois, tavern.
Although I love Laird’s, once in a while, like our Founding Fathers, I am nagged by the idea that I’m somehow not as cultured as I should be. And so, like Jefferson and Franklin, I began looking toward France—although in this case it was merely to take the next step toward the world’s finest apple brandy. Calvados was declared by Liebling, in Between Meals, to be “the best alcohol in the world.” In Liebling’s opinion, Calvados “has a more agreeable bouquet, a warmer touch to the heart, and more outgoing personality than cognac.” Though he did admit that “not everybody has had the advantage of a good early soaking in the blessed liquid.”
I arrived at the Drouin distillery—which produces both the Coeur de Lion and Comte Louis de Lauriston brands—near the town of Pont-l’Évêque on a beautiful September afternoon. Calvados can be produced in only three AOCs in Lower Normandy, where it is distilled from fermented cider that’s pressed from about fifty local apple varieties. Pays d’Auge, where Drouin is located, is considered to be the finest Calvados AOC in Normandy.
Guillaume Drouin, thirty-one years old, is one of several Calvados distillers