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)
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