1980 Berry Bros. & Rudd Calvados Pays d'Auge, Christian Drouin (47%)
About this SPIRIT
Christian Drouin Calvados
The story of Drouin calvados began around 1960. There was nothing to indicate the Christian Drouin the elder, an industrialist from Rouen, was destined to make a career in spirits. Nothing, that is, apart from his taste for good food and good wines. When he bought a farm in Gonneville he decided to use the cider apple orchards to produce calvados. His aims were simple: produce a top-quality spirit, the best. "My father transmitted to me the calvados virus", says the younger Christian Drouin, who has today given the family business a world-wide reputation. The brand is now sold as far a field as the USA and Japan in more than 40 countries. The third generation is now hard at work. It maintains the traditions that have enabled the estate to become one of the 100 "sites of excellence in taste" selected by the ministry for culture. In 1995 the European foundation awarded the estate its European Prestige Grand Prix for the whole of its production, which represents the quintessence of calvados.
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Description
Since the early 1960s, three generations of the Drouin family have been growing apples, making cider, distilling spirit and patiently ageing it to become absolutely first-class Calvados. Now led by the extraordinarily talented Guillaume Drouin, the orchards are in magnificent condition, the distillery produces consistently wonderful eaux de vie, and the multifarious barrel cellars are repositories of calm, considered maturation using a wide range of cask types.
Traces of nougat and garlic roulade settle down to deliver deep caramelised sugar and toffee sweetness with some lavender water to soften the bruised apple richness. Peppercorn spice gives zest and there is some lime and lemon citrus undercut by a liquorice edge. Long, patient maturation will allow the strangely beautiful complexities of a spirit such as this to present.
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