The Wall Street Journal-20080126-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Food - Drink -- How-s Your Drink- Summer Sun Distilled
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Food & Drink -- How's Your Drink? Summer Sun Distilled
Sixty years ago, calvados was a sensation in the U.S. -- or at least it would have been if the makers of the French apple brandy could have just filled the orders. The sudden demand "has caught the apple- squeezers in France with their presses down," the United Press reported in February 1948. "They have a chance to turn their cheapest grog into the American national drink -- and they didn't make enough."
That rare marketing moment was driven by the success of a calvados- drenched novel of refugee life in Paris by the author of "All Quiet on the Western Front." Broadway columnist Dorothy Kilgallen noticed that "since Erich Maria Remarque's novel 'Arch of Triumph' hit the best- seller lists, an odd thing has happened at the East Side bars. Patrons are asking for calvados."
In the novel, calvados is something of an aphrodisiac for the lost and dispirited -- making the world-weary capable of love. Goodness knows Remarque made the stuff sound good, calling it distilled "sunshine that has lain all through a hot summer and a blue fall on apples in an ancient wind-swept orchard of Normandy." The second night that lovers Ravic and Joan are together, their affair nearly stalls. But they get through it with the help of calvados. Still, no brandy could keep the doomed lovers from being doomed lovers.
The novel stayed on best-seller lists, and soon a movie, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, was in the works. Calvados seemed so important to the storyline that producer David Lewis bought 50 cases to use on the set. He assumed there would be more when he needed it. But when the movie was ready for release in 1948 and Lewis looked to do a product tie-in, there wasn't any calvados to be had. The liquor missed its opportunity, and I suspect that for the next several decades most calvados bought in the States was used in French dishes. The "Arch of Triumph" fad gave way to fads for flaming crepes Suzette.
There is an irony to Remarque's role as a promoter of calvados. Boyer, preparing to play Ravic, asked the author if it was true that "many parts of the book parallel your own story and that you are really the hero." Remarque allowed that "there were many similarities, but there was one great difference." He couldn't stand calvados.
In a newspaper interview, Remarque elaborated: "Personally, I think calvados is a terrible drink." But there was something about the word "calvados" that "sounds romantic whether you know what it is or ever intend to taste it," he said.
A.J. Liebling, the New Yorker writer whose two great passions were the ring and the table, had an explanation for calvados's mysterious allure. Calling it "the veritable elixir of Eden," he suggested that the brandy was the stuff of original sin: "The apple of the Bible is symbolic; it stands for the distilled cider that will turn the head of any woman."
Liebling had splashed onto a Normandy beach to write about the men fighting their way across the hedgerows in the D-Day invasion. Scrounging with them for something better than C-rations, he found that most farms could be counted on for a spot of the brandy made from distilling the local cider. Then, most calvados was made where the apples were harvested and the cider fermented. Traveling stills were trucked from one farm to another, and the farmers did their best to hide the bulk of their output from the revenue men. "Good Calvados is never sold legally," Liebling maintained. "The tax leaves a taste that the Norman finds intolerable." This impulse to sell and consume calvados under the legal radar may be one reason the apple brandy has always been a local taste, even in France.
"Millions of Frenchmen are obtuse enough to prefer cognac," Liebling sneered, dismissing grape brandies as "precocious and superficial by comparison." Calvados, he wrote, "is the best alcohol in the world."
Ernest Hemingway liked too many types of alcohol to settle on any one as the best. But in 1950, he was knocking around Paris with his pal A.E. Hotchner, playing the ponies. "I do not expect ever to duplicate the pleasure of those Paris steeplechase days," Mr. Hotchner wrote in his memoir of the writer. One key to that pleasure was "Ernest's silver flask, engraved 'From Mary with Love' and containing splendidly aged Calvados." Even Igor Stravinsky had a robust taste for the stuff. Artist Marc Chagall was annoyed no end when he traveled from Rouen to Paris once to meet the composer, only to find him in a calvados stupor.
I can't say I am quite as enthusiastic about calvados as Liebling was -- how could one be? Nonetheless, the apple brandy is a pleasant alternative to its grape-based cousins. I picked up a half-dozen bottles, young and old, and found that though they lacked the depth and structure of a fine cognac, the best were indeed a charming distillation of a summer's sunshine on the orchard.
A 12-year-old calvados from Lecompte was a good example of how apple brandy fares when kept long in oak, with a slight woody bitterness balancing the applesauce sweetness of the underlying spirit. The Apreval Grande Reserve stood out with an intriguing hint of smoke. But my favorite was a young calvados. The Boulard Grand Solage, blended from barrels only three to five years old, doesn't need the deep mellowing of long aging. Beautifully distilled, the Boulard is fresh, fruity and free from the more formal mannerisms af age. Who knows -- if Ravic and Joan had stuck to a calvados this cheerful and friendly, they might have found a happier ending.
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Sampling Calvados
Good/Very Good
Boulard Grand Solage
$44.99
A young and charming calvados, a blend of three to five year old spirit. Plenty of fresh fruit, free from the formal mannerisms of older brandy.
Lecompte 12 Ans
$74.99
Long enough in the barrel that the vanilla of the oak has given way to a slight woody bitterness that balances well with the applesauce sweetness of the underlying spirit.
Apreval Grande Reserve
$83.99
A well-rounded brandy made interesting by a hint of Scotch-like smokiness.
