Description
Calvados has been in production for more than 400 years, but C. Drouin Calvados began rather unintentionally around 1960. Christian Drouin Sr., the grandfather to the current head of the company Guillaume Drouin, purchased a country house in the Pays d'Auge area of Normandy in 1960. The house sat on a farm with an apple orchard, and Drouin Sr. harvested the apples on his estate in hopes of seeing a return. He was disappointed to find that the price for apples was so low that he wouldn't even recoup his harvesting expenses, so he held onto his fruit and sought an alternative solution. Drouin Sr.'s friend, Pierre Pivet, had a mobile still and would travel to various farms to distill cider into calvados. This friend agreed to advise Drouin Sr. on pressing his apples into cider and distilling the cider into Calvados, teaching him the art of making Calvados from start to finish. Thanks to Pivet, even the earliest vintages of Calvados produced were of consistent and high quality.
