Meet the liquor that almost no one but chefs and the French know anything about: Calvados.
In Normady, the climate was too severe for grape growing. They grew apples, wonderful apples and made cider. Then of course, being human someone had the brilliant idea that they could distill the cider. Being French they did it better than anyone on earth.
The result is a liquor like no other. It has an amazing bouquet of apples. You can pour a single glass and leave it on the table and in no time at all the entire dining room smells of apples.
It is not however a liqueur. It is bone dry and quite fiery, a liquor for whisky and cognac drinkers. You will be left with a gentle aftertaste of autumn apples.
The French and chefs around the world use the stuff in cream sauces, particularly with veal. Which is why there is always everywhere in the world a single SKU of Calvados. But if by chance there is a decent sized community of French or Normans (or merely people like me, although to the best of my knowledge there aren’t a whole lot of people like me in the world) you sometimes find two or three SKUs.
Buy it and try it. This stuff is incredible in all incarnations.
I love Calvados – for drinking and for cooking.
no kidding. Bought a Boulard in MB a couple of weeks ago to introduce it to some cooks, which got me back on a Calvados binge…