Pommeau

Pommeau is the apple made rich, warm and grown-up: deep amber to mahogany in the glass, still and syrupy, pouring with a slow weight and no fizz at all. The nose is layered baked and dried apple and quince over honey, caramel and brown sugar, with the oak ageing lending toasted nut, vanilla and warm spice and the Calvados threading a gentle, spirity apple heat through it all. On the palate it is sweet and round — the preserved apple sugar coats the tongue — but the fortifying brandy gives it a firm, warming backbone and a long, faintly tannic, oaky finish that keeps it from cloying and lends real length. Served well chilled in a small glass, it works as beautifully as an aperitif poured over a wedge of ripe melon as it does after dinner against foie gras, blue cheese, walnuts or an apple tart. It is, in effect, Calvados and apple juice reconciled into a single mellow, dessert-like whole.