Michel Huard "K&L Exclusive Cuvee" Vieux Calvados (750ml)

When you look at what we've imported from Calvados over the last few years, be it Camut or Hubert, you'll notice a thread that runs through all of these expressions: they each taste like a juicy apple. Yet when you travel to Normandy and you taste the huge variety of different apple ciders and brandies, many of them are not so juicy. There are some that taste like brown apple, some that taste like an earthy apple, and many that taste like the skin of an apple. Knowing that the sweetest apple flavors are the most accessible, we've generally gone down that route. With this K&L exclusive blend from Michel Huard, however, we've decided to branch out from the easily marketable. A mix of 7 and 17 year brandies, this is the first Calvados we've imported that focuses more on the apple skin, the peel, the earth, and the complexities underneath the fruit. The nose is entirely contradictory, however. The brandy smells of delicious, juicy, pure apple flavor. The first sip is where the contrast makes itself known. Gone are the sweet apple notes, replaced by unmistakable flavors of bitter apple skin and earthy cider. You can almost taste yourself in a wet orchard just after the rain falls. In a sense, that's where we were when we put together this blend. The December weather was cold, the ground was wet and earthy, and this Calvados was just what we needed to fend off the piercing Norman air. This Vieux is a testament to that day and those influences.