That’s great to hear!
Would Chateau Lanessan Haut-Medoc 2016 be a good choice? That is actually in stock here locally but it does say limited quantities.
It would be a good red Bordeaux from a good year at that price point. I’d get them two bottles; a bottle of Champagne and a bottle of Calvados. I much like Ployez-Jacquemart Champagne at that price point. Champagne is always fun to celebrate with.
Have you ever been to France? ![[rofl.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7452fcd8e675af869f8da01174474a545b03944.gif "rofl"){kind=small}
Two weeks ago…
I like your cute idea, but show me which rural restaurant in Normandy has a wine list online (or a menu, or even a website)!
Done. Nathan S M I T H, what town did she study in?
Andy, $5 I find something. In or out?
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Nathan,
2016 Chateau Lanessan is perfect for your purpose. It will be good now, and if you can swing two bottles, one would be for the future. The wine will easily improve for a decade or more.
Dan Kravitz
I used “the Fork” app a bunch, very useful.
Bordelet (fairly available) and Drouin (less so) are really nice, clean ciders with varying sweetness levels. Dupont can be heavier and more barrel aged. Depending on what kinds of beers she likes, I would go with one of those. There are shops that can ship Bordelet to KY.
I would buy the Calvados for someone who likes drinking brandy. I bought a vintage Calvados once as a gift, and I’m the only one who drinks it. (Yay for me!)
Send a PM and an email to this board member - he’s the expert on Normandy [my recollection is that his grandfather had a place in Normandy, and that he spent much of his childhood there].
Hopefully he still answers the same email address as five years ago.
A friend has just drawn my attention to this thread. I live in Normandy and can confirm that the main fruit for making booze here are the apple and the pear. I am not much of a drinker of cider and perry though they can be very enjoyable on a warm day. However Calvados, apple (+ pear in some cases) brandy, from producers like Groult, Camut, Drouin, Dupont, Pacory …can IMO equal Cognac and Armagnac costing double the price. That is not to say that good Calvados is cheap; we visited the Drouin distillery not long ago and were impressed by the range of vintage Calvados, some of the older of which cost several hundred €.
Turning to wine, there were grapes grown for wine making in Normandy in the middle age through the 19th century when phylloxera destroyed the remaining vineyards. Recently Gérard Samson had the idea of reviving winemaking at a well exposed site with favourable soil near Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, which is about 25km from where I live. This business is called les Arpents du Soleil as someone has already mentioned. It has turned out to be a successful venture. He makes good whites from several white grape including Auxerrois, Melon de Bourgogne and Pinot Gris and an excellent red from Pinot Noir. This last is IMO at least equal for drinking round 5 years of age to village Burgundy of a lighter style like, say, Santenay from Muzard or Givry from Mouton.
With global warming, Normandy is back in the zone viable for winemaking and I hope others will follow Samson’s example, e.g. on the well exposed Côtes d’Argence near Caen.
Thanks, Tim! That’s terrifically informative.
Sorry for the delay in responding, but I wanted to thank everyone for the continued comments. They have all been very helpful! (Someone asked about what town she studied in, I haven’t been able to get that out of her, she just refers to it as Normandy…I’m not a very good detective)
Maybe you can buy her a crepe griddle to remind her of that region, and she can make you crispy cheesy crepes.
(that’s what I’m getting the kids as a random family type xmas present)
Also if you are getting ciders…be careful of all the new wave / natural ‘sour’ ciders out there. They are pretty ‘different’ and will taste off unless you are prepared for that flavor.
What are these sour ciders? Aren’t all ciders sour in the sense they’ve got some malic/lactic acid, as wines do?
I googled the term and it returned just “funky” naturally fermented ciders, which covers about 95% of the ciders made in Normandy and Bretagne.
These are much more sour/tart than conventional ciders.
I think the Basque’s particularly like these sour ciders. The retailers/wine bars that offer them make sure to note that they are sour ciders though. The taste is very distinct, and to me, unpleasant.
Do you mean like they are only high in acidity? In the way one would call wines made from Riesling, Albariño or Petit Manseng as “sour wines”? Or how do they differ somehow else? A “distinct taste” really doesn’t describe it that well.
I guess no matter what we do here in Finland, all our real ciders must be “sour ciders” then, since it’s so cold here that it’s almost impossible to ripen the apples suitable for cider making enough for them to lose the acidity.
I assume Arv is talking about ciders that have funky aromas similar to sour beers. I definitely get some funky yeast related aromas in Basque ciders. If there is also something bacterial going on, maybe it’s possible that the cider becomes more sour than the base material was, but I don’t know if that is happening. As far as Normandy, Etienne Dupont’s ciders are definitely more wild/funky than someone like Bordelet’s.