Cidre Doux

Cidre Doux is the sweet, juicy face of apple: pour it cool and it comes up hazy straw-to-amber gold with a soft cushion of fine bubbles and a thin foam collar. The nose is all orchard — fresh-cut and stewed apple, a lick of honey, a little pear and orchard fruit and a soft floral lift, with only a faint trace of the farmyard funk that marks the drier keeved styles. On the palate it is round, gentle and clearly sweet, its mouth-filling residual apple sugar balanced by soft acidity and only a whisper of drying tannin from the bittersweet cider fruit, finishing juicy, clean and easy. The fine natural sparkle keeps it from cloying and lifts the fruit. Where a Brut is taut, dry and grown-up, Doux is soft, sweet and welcoming — the family-table and crêperie cider, closer to a lightly alcoholic apple nectar than to a wine, and the lowest in alcohol of all the grades.