Producing Regions and Legal Definitions
Like many French wines, Calvados is governed by appellation contrôlée regulations. There are three appellations for calvados:
- The AOC calvados area includes all of the Calvados, Manche, and Orne départements and parts of Eure, Mayenne, Sarthe, and Eure-et-Loir.
- AOC calvados makes up for over 70 percent of the total production.
- Minimum of two years ageing in oak barrels.
- The terroir, geographical area, is defined.
- The apples and pears are defined cider varieties.
- The procedures in production like pressing, fermentation, distillation and ageing is regulated.
- Usually single column distillation.
- The more restrictive AOC calvados Pays d'Auge area is limited to the east end of the département of Calvados and a few adjoining districts.
- Extensive quality control—the basic rules for AOC calvados together with several additional requirements.
- Aging for a minimum of two years in oak barrels.
- Double distillation in an alembic pot-still.
- Produced within the designated area in Pays d'Auge.
- A minimum of six weeks fermentation of the cider.
- Flavour elements are controlled.
- AOC calvados Domfrontais reflects the long tradition of pear orchards in the area, resulting in a unique fruity calvados. The regulation is similar to the AOC calvados and the column still is used.
- A minimum of 30 percent pears from the designated areas is used.
- A three-year minimum of ageing in oak barrels.
- The orchards must consist of at least 15 percent of pear trees (25 percent from the sixteenth harvest).
- Fermier "farm-made" calvados—some quality minded producers both inside and outside the Pays d’Auge make "calvados fermier", which indicates that the calvados is entirely made on the farm in a traditional agricultural way according to high quality demands.
Read more about this topic: Calvados (brandy)
Famous quotes containing the words producing, regions, legal and/or definitions:
“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.”
—Oswald Spengler (1880–1936)
“No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“The loosening, for some people, of rigid role definitions for men and women has shown that dads can be great at calming babies—if they take the time and make the effort to learn how. It’s that time and effort that not only teaches the dad how to calm the babies, but also turns him into a parent, just as the time and effort the mother puts into the babies turns her into a parent.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)