Christian Drouin 1962 Coeur De Lion Pays d'Auge Calvados

Rounded on the nose with fragrances of boiled cider, nutmeg and roasted coffee. It has retained lively and fruity notes (dried and over-ripe fruit). Delicate, refined and elegant on the palate. Suave at first, evolving towards a touch of tannic dryness in the finish, with “flattened apple. Aging in old Calvados casks. Importer Notes

As Jason Wilson wrote in the New York Times , at the time of Christian Drouin’s start, there were about 15,000 producers in Calvados, most of them very small scale farmers. In addition to making his own Calvados, Drouin the elder bought up the remaining stocks of his neighbors, some stretching back to before World War II. What the first generation began as an obsession the second generation turned into a business. Christian Drouin Jr. joined his father in the Calvados business and in 1979 decided to aim the direction of their house and business to the export market, as at that time Calvados was something that old men drank with their coffee in the morning (coffee and calva ). With the stocks that his father had built over decades bolstered by the purchased liquids of long gone estates, this represented the coming out of Calvados as something more than a regional drink, and one fit for the finest restaurants and bars. Success came to the house of Drouhin and in 1991 the ‘house’ was transferred to another 17th century estate in Coudray Rabut. In 2013 the then 25 year old Guillaume Drouhin took over the management of the estate and production. With degrees in agriculture and winemaking, the future looks bright for the next generation to come.

Across the orchards that the Drouin family works with there are a total of thirty different varieties of apple trees. Different varieties ripen at different times between late summer and early winter, so the apples are stored until the proper mix of sweet, bittersweet, bitter and acidic has been achieved. The various varieties from each of the categories are blended together and pressed into cider simultaneously. All the cider is pressed at the original farm, with wild yeast fermentation taking place at both properties in a combination of 100+ year-old wooden vats, stainless steel tanks and concrete tanks. All distillation takes place at the new estate using a total of three stills. Pierre Pivet’s original mobile pot still from 1946 is still in use today. There are two stills on the mobile platform, heated by direct fire, and a third, charentes-style still has also added to expand production. Michael Kennel, D&M