Drunkblogging: Calvados

Now, this isn't a proper Drunkblogging post per se, as I'm not going to take you step-by-step through an evening of drinking calvados--because you can do that your very own self.

In fact, this post is to urge you to do just that. Your local liquor store probably carries some, so go get yourself a bottle. Make sure that at the very least, it's labelled AOC; like scotch for example, the taste difference between the good stuff and the cheap stuff is very great, with the price:quality graph ascending at about 1:1 before levelling off toward incrementalism at about the $40 price point. The cheap stuff may as well be applejack. Bleah. If your wallet can swing it and it's available, go for bottles labelled Vieux Reserve, VO/VSOP, or even XO (indicating increasing length of aging in oak; 3, 4 or 6 years minimum, respectively). Less-aged bottles are fruitier, while older ones tend to take on more oak/vanilla tones from the aging. I have liked all of the AOC Pays d'Auge I've tried, so I don't think you can go far wrong there.

The French are known for drinking a small glass of calvados between courses of a large meal; this trou normand ("normandy hole") is meant to reawaken the appetite. Calvados is also offered as a digestif at most French restaurants. I've found that I enjoy it neat, in a brandy snifter, with or without accompanying cigar. Given that it's a tasty warming drink on a cold nasty day (which they have a lot of in Normandy), calvados may replace spiced rum as my winter hip-flask drink of choice as well.

Hmm. Maybe I should have posted this back in the fall. Well, you get what you pay for. Anyway, get on the bandwagon before P. Diddy, Busta and their ilk discover calvados and do a Courvoisier on it.

[photo not mine.]