http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/dining/calvados-a-taste-of-apples-and-fall-the-pour.html?_r=2

The Pour: The Flavor of Apples and a Sip of Fall

By ERIC ASIMOV
October 31, 2011

IN apple season, it doesn't take long for me to make the leap from fruit to cider to Calvados, which distills apples down to their elemental character in brandy form.

[Calvados, apple-flavored brandy from Normandy, at the Barclay Bar in Manhattan. Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times]

I love Calvados, though I confess I don't drink it very often. Yet when I do, I'm reminded immediately why I love it. Apple aromas and flavors burst vividly from the glass, in jagged flashes that seem to penetrate deeply into the complex essence of an apple. Clarity, purity, tart citrus, cinnamon spice, earthiness, mintiness: these are just some of the sensations I experience in a glass of good Calvados.

My problem with Calvados is not the apple element. It's the brandy part.

The usual way of serving brandy does it no favors. It's generally consigned to an after-dinner or late-night role, served in those horrible oversize balloon snifters that do little beyond emphasizing the biting heat of the alcohol. A smaller snifter, or a good white-wine glass, is superior for enjoying any brandy.

Calvados in particular can defy our expectations of brandy. Because it's distilled from cider rather than from wine, it's more rustic by nature than Cognac or Armagnac. Certainly it is by reputation. Serving Calvados in a white-wine glass might signal an intent to regard brandy from a different critical stance.

"I think once people realize that they can approach these spirits as if they were wine--with more intelligence and attention to nuance--their experience will be greatly heightened," said Charles Neal, who imports wine and spirits and whose "Calvados: The Spirit of Normandy" was just published by Flame Grape Press. For one thing, as the book persuasively asserts, Calvados has terroir. From region to region, sometimes village to village, the soil, fruit and customs can differ completely.

"Calvados" is an astounding 700-page stroll through the history and culture of Normandy and Calvados producers, through orchards and cellars, down to seemingly esoteric details, like what a producer might have scribbled in chalk on a typical barrel.

Mr. Neal looks at the multitude of different apples, from sweet to acidic, that might go into a producer's blend. Many people will be surprised to learn that pears, too, can be part of the formula, particularly for those brandies with the appellation Calvados Domfrontais, where the rules require at least 30% of the fruit to be pears.

In truth, the presence of pears is awfully hard to detect in Calvados. The dozens of pears grown for Calvados Domfrontais are generally too astringent to be eaten, "the pear equivalent of crabapples," Mr. Neal calls them. I recently had a glass of Lemorton Reserve, an excellent young Calvados from the Domfrontais region that is made predominantly of pears, and, while perhaps a phantom fragrance came through, it still tasted primarily of apples to me.

Beyond Calvados Domfrontais, the appellation system unfortunately tells little about the many regional differences in terroir, though it does say something about production method. The basic appellation "Calvados" indicates the brandy can come from anywhere within the region, and that it need only be distilled once in a column still.

Calvados Pays d'Auge comes from the heart of Calvados country and must be distilled twice in a pot still, like those used for Cognac. It's a more expensive, labor-intensive process. Even so, those brandies labeled simply Calvados are not necessarily inferior. Michel Huard, a small producer, for example, makes wonderful, complex Calvados. Still, nuances of terroir are hard to detect from the label. Occasionally, a label reveals whether a Calvados is from Mortainais or Cotentin, but not often.

Calvados, like Cognac, is dominated by big producers, like Boulard and Busnel. Sometimes they can make good brandies. Boulard's Calvados Pays d'Auge X.O., a $90 bottle, is fresh, mellow and elegant, but leans toward Cognac in emphasizing sweet vanilla, toffee and barrel characteristics over apple. Sometimes, a Calvados from one of the big assembly-line producers can taste manipulated, thickened with sugar syrup, for example, which is legal, as is the addition of caramel and the use of wood chips.

Among the large houses are more focused producers like Christian Drouin or Roger Groult, kind of Billecart-Salmon to Boulard's Veuve Clicquot, to put it in Champagne terms. Drouin's Calvados are always excellent, even inexpensive bottles like the Pays d'Auge Selection for $25, and I recently had an unusual, almost butterscotch-flavored Reserve Pays d'Auge from Groult for $38.

Most interesting to me are the Calvados made by farmers who grow their own fruit, like grower-producers in Champagne. Where the bigger houses strive for consistency, these small-production Calvados are often strikingly distinctive. I can't think of a young Calvados I've enjoyed more than the Pays d'Auge Reserve from Domaine de Montreuil, a $45 bottle in which the fresh, ripe, juicy apples, with a little mint and cinnamon for complexity, fairly leaped from the glass. It was a tad fiery and raw, but I didn't mind.

Sadly, small-production Calvados are hard to find. Mr. Neal imports several, including Domaine de Montreuil, Lemorton and Adrien Camut. Extensive Calvados selections can also be found in New York at the Barclay Bar at the InterContinental Hotel on the East Side and at the Brandy Library in TriBeCa.

Consumption of brandy in the United States has gone up in the last 20 years, partly, at least, because of the rising interest in cocktails. Barclay Bar, for one, emphasizes Calvados cocktails. For me, though, nothing beats the gorgeous, clear evocation of apples in a glass of good, unadorned young Calvados on a crisp fall day.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 2, 2011, on page D6 of the New York edition with the headline: Flavors of Apple And a Sip of Fall.