Moutai Is Now A Half-Trillion Dollar Company

About three months ago, I posted an article about baijiu. My goal was to show western drinkers that the booze world in China was the next big thing; or rather already the big thing, because—bottle for bottle—baijiu is the most consumed spirit on the planet.

To pile on to my previous sentiment, I give you this article from the Wall Street Journal.

Kweichow Moutai Co. , the best-known distiller of the fiery Chinese spirit baijiu, has risen to a market value of more than half a trillion dollars, making it the most visible symbol of investor euphoria in China.

Moutai shares closed at a record high Wednesday, on the last trading day before a weeklong Lunar New Year holiday. They have more than doubled in the past 12 months, gaining more than 30% since the start of 2021.

The rally has turned the liquor company into one of the world’s most valuable consumer-goods companies, outstripping giants such as Procter & Gamble Co. , Nestlé SA and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE .

It is now roughly as important to the Chinese market as Apple Inc. is in the U.S., accounting for 7.3% of the Shanghai Composite Index while Apple makes up about 6.7% of the S&P 500.

And yet 99.9% of drinkers I know have never even heard of Moutai, let alone tried it.

Like I said before, if you’re looking for the next great spirits adventure, it’s happening in China.

-David Driscoll

Instagram Live Repost: Talking Cognac & Armagnac With Charles Neal

I’ve been traveling to France with Charles Neal for almost ten years, scouring the countryside for small producers that make some pretty incredible (and affordable!) brandies.

Now we’re finally bringing the old dog and pony show to Mission! Watch for a TON of new exclusive brandies to hit the web within the next week, including super old expressions from Goudoulin, Ognoas, and more.

And in the meantime, check out this introductory conversation. Thirty minutes isn’t really enough time to get deep into the subject matter, but it’s a great place to start.

-David Driscoll

California Terroir

A vineyard outside Howell Mountain in Napa

While visiting family in the Bay Area last year (pre-COVID), my wife and I decided to take 101 South on the way back to Los Angeles, stopping at some of our favorite towns along the Central Coast on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. We had lunch in Paso Robles and—being that I try my best to drink locally wherever I am—I decided to order a glass of white wine from one of the nearby producers. It wasn’t all that great, but then again my expectations weren’t all that high. No matter how much I want to support my winemaking neighbors here in California, my taste skews towards the Old World. I like acid. I like balance. And I’m still fascinated by terroir.

Not the idea of terroir, mind you; paraphrasing the ever-hilarious Stuff White People like by Christian Lander. Considering it’s become a measuring stick for people who think “complexity” is the pinnacle of craft, I don’t throw that word around lightly these days. I’m not trying to prove anything by talking about terroir. I just like tasting oyster shell in my Chablis. I like tasting crushed stones in my Sancerre. I’m fascinated by wine’s ability to soak up its environment, which is why I’ve always been drawn to terroir-driven expressions, particularly the whites. The viticultural aspect of wine—the actual farming—is what initially intrigued me away from teaching and into the booze business; it’s the most compelling part of alcohol for me.

When I first started in wine retail, back in 2007, California was going through why my old pal Jon Bonné refers to as the “Big Flavor Era,” a time when Napa wineries catered solely to critics like Robert Parker, extracting as much ripeness and richness as possible from their grapes in the search for higher alcohol levels and fuller bodies. When Jon first came to San Francisco in 2006 to write about wine for the San Francisco Chronicle, he too was skeptical about California’s winemaking scene, and—as he writes in his fantastic book The New California Wine—the “ubiquity of oaky, uninspired bottles and a presumption that bigger was indeed better.”

That’s not to say that California wines weren’t good in those days—because taste is relative—but rather that they all sort of tasted the same. They were full-bodied, sweet, silky, and smooth; everything the general consumer usually associates with quality hooch. They just didn’t express any real sense of place, which is the theme of Jon’s book: to showcase the wines of “newer” Californian producers, those who spend more time in the vineyard than the laboratory.

Now before we go any further, I want to make a few things clear. First, there were plenty of California producers making amazing wines with restraint and character back in 2007; it’s just that they were overshadowed by the 100 point scores being doled out to the heavy hitters. They were outliers of the culture, rather than part of the culture itself. Second, a wine doesn’t necessarily need to express terroir in order to be good. I explain it to consumers this way: if I’m on vacation in Europe and I’m looking for a place to eat, I’m going to go out of my way to find a restaurant that serves dishes I either can’t get back at home, or are a specialty of the region. If I’m in France, I’m going to eat a shit ton of black truffles and duck confit. If I’m in Italy, I’m going to eat local pasta until I can no longer button my pants.

Pinot Noir vineyards in Sonoma

When I’m buying a wine from France, Italy, or even California, I’m in search of a similar experience. Naturally, it should be pleasing to the taste, but I’m also interested in what it can express, maybe a flavor or an aroma that is distinct and can be replicated nowhere else. It’s not that California wine is incapable of terroir, but rather that California winemakers often see it as an afterthought, if an even attribute whatsoever.

I want be careful here because I feel like this is the exact point where we lose everyday consumers in the wine business. We start talking about these grand ideas—land, climate, and terrain—when most people just want to drink something that tastes good so they can get their buzz on. The longer we lecture, the larger that soapbox tends to loom. Ultimately, what we’re talking about is the difference between practicality and art, between a commodity and something stylistic. Some people see music as a commodity they listen to in order to pass the time while driving. Others see it as an art form worthy of the highest veneration. There are those that just want to dance and have a good time, and others who strive to push the medium to its furthest limits. That’s the divide we’re talking about here. It’s not snobbery. It’s just a matter of what inspires you as a human being.

I want to use a quote from Robert Mondavi here that I found in Jon’s New California book to drive this point home. In 1962, having just returned from his first ever trip to Europe, the Napa godfather summarized the divide between California and the Old World as such:

“To my mind, the contrast was stark: we were treating wine as a business, the great European chateaus were treating wine as high art.”

Bingo.

In Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Loire Valley, and throughout France, the perception of wine isn’t all that different from that of literature or painting. People obsess over it. They catalog it, critique it, discuss it, and argue over its merit until the wee hours of the morning. Whereas my friends from college might wax philosophically about Radiohead’s importance in the prog lexicon of Genesis and Pink Floyd, citizens of Paris are doing the same about the potential of a piece of earth to express greatness using grapes as its vessel. I’ve spent plenty of evenings in the French countryside listening to farmers bicker about a ten dollar bottle of table red, almost resorting to fisticuffs over what seems like the most meaningless disagreement. It’s serious business over there. Or rather, it’s beyond business. To some, it’s almost a religion.

The mysticism behind biodynamic farming, and how the lunar cycles impact a vineyard’s potential, leave plenty of room for cultish associations when it comes to agriculture, but that’s part of what makes wine more than just a simple beverage. The intangibles of nature and the heavens cannot always be explained with science, or fixed after the fact like airbrushing a photoshoot. That sense of awe has long been missing from California’s wine culture. The science of production, manipulation in the cellar, from micro-oxidation to reverse osmosis, was always more important in order to make the wines more palatable to the masses. Driving down 101 on that Sunday afternoon, looking at the vineyards along the way, got me thinking about California again and my longstanding desire to be more supportive of local winemakers. I needed to go back and reacquaint myself with some of the more old world-minded producers, which is why I pulled out Jon’s book in the first place. That led me to a bottle of Matthiasson Napa Chardonnay from Linda Vista Vineyard, and that first glass led me straight to Steve Matthiasson.

To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t until I went back to Jon’s book that I learned about Steve Matthiasson and his passion for farming. Like I mentioned, my early days in retail were spent draining bottles of Pauillac and Sancerre, not so much Napa Chardonnay, so I somehow completely missed that the San Francisco Chronicle named Steve winemaker of the year in 2014, and the string of accolades that followed from there. There is no shortage of press concerning his wines, and the fact that I’m so late to the game is evidence of the tremendous California-sized gap in my wine knowledge. After initially freaking out over Steve’s wine, I reached out to him in an attempt to learn more about his vineyard and why his Chardonnay tasted so vibrant and fresh in comparison to other Napa producers. I wanted to know more. Now that I’m back in retail at Mission, I want our staff members and customers to know about Steve’s wines.

“One of the things I love about the Linda Vista vineyard is the acidity it provides. People think of Napa as a warm region, but there’s a big difference between the bottom and the top of the valley,” Steve told me over the phone recently; “Calistoga gets quite warm, but we get fog that doesn’t burn off until late morning, and in the afternoon the breeze comes off of San Pablo Bay. I wouldn’t call it a cool climate site, but it’s definitely a mild climate, so the wines tend to have a lot of acidity.”

Steve Matthiasson at home in Napa

To say that the Matthiasson Linda Vista Chardonnay has acidity is like saying Las Vegas gets warm in the summer; it’s factually correct, but it’s a bit of an understatement. I can say with complete certainty that Steve’s wine is the most taste bud-tingling, zippy, zesty California Chardonnay that I’ve ever tasted. It’s an explosion of citrus. It’s like a party on your tongue, or—as my wife described it—like a wine disguised as a Margarita. It has acidity up the wazoo, to the extent that never in a million years would I have picked it out as California Chardonnay. I wanted to know more about why that was the case.

“Oak Knoll, where we’re located, was never renowned as a Cabernet district because it was considered too cool, so it became the Chardonnay region,” Steve explained; “The soil is composed of marine-based sediment. The south part of Mt. Veeder is marine uplift, so it’s 20 million year old ocean soil, whereas the rest of Napa is volcanic and about 5 million years old. It’s high in magnesium, which works like calcium in limestone. Limestone soils are also low in potassium. It’s not very romantic, but low potassium is a big part of terroir. Grapes hold more acidity when they grow in low potassium soils.”

This explanation made my entire year. For over a decade, I had been taught that limestone soils produced wines with higher acidity levels, but nothing more beyond that. The explanations from winemakers and sommeliers always seemed to stop there, as if the answer was obvious, and I was never scientifically-motivated enough to learn about the chemistry on my own. There is indeed a terroir-driven reason for why the Matthiasson Chardonnay has such incredible pep: it’s the magnesium in the ancient ocean soil, reminiscent of another famous marine-driven terroir, also known for wines with blistering acidity.

The most famous stretch of Kimmeridgian limestone soil runs directly underneath France’s Champagne region all the way down to Chablis. The calcareous soil is a big part of why Champagne and Chablis both produce crisp and vibrant whites, often with minerality to boot. That limestone chalk, once part of the ocean floor, is what makes those vines so special, and why they’re able to produce wines of a distinct character, unable to be replicated elsewhere no matter how many have tried in the past. It’s what makes Champagne so famous. It’s why, as Steve stated, “Chablis was considered the gold standard for Chardonnay” during California’s early winemaking days. That limestone is ultimately what you’re paying for when you buy yourself a bottle. I asked Steve if there were any other factors besides the low potassium levels: “There’s the climate, the marine soil, and the fact that the vines are more vigorous in the marine clay. Vigorously growing vines also tend to produce more acidity,” he added.

Linda Vista Vineyard in the West Oak Knoll region of Napa

It wasn’t just the acidity that blew me away, however; it was also the distinct flavor of Meyer lemon the exploded from the glass. I typically associate California Chardonnay with stone fruit flavors, so the Linda Vista expression really caught me off guard. “We pick it really early over a three week period,” Steve explained; “We start at Champagne levels of ripeness and we end right as it hits modern style ripeness, where it has stone fruit and texture. It’s basically screeching crazy acid, mixed with riper grapes from the end of the pick. It’s a single vineyard, but it’s picked over a three week process. Back in Chablis, the small families can’t necessarily pick all their grapes in one day, so they do the same thing. We also don’t stir the lees because that can introduce oxygen, which can make that lemon flavor go away. Then we use neutral barrels to hold the aromatics.”

What really got me excited about that bottle of Matthiasson was that it was Chardonnay. I’ve spent plenty of time in my career visiting the great red wine sites of California—Monte Bello, Eisele, Howell Mountain—so I’ve always known where to look when in need of great Cabernet Sauvignon. Yet, I can’t remember the last time a bottle of California white wine got me so fired up. Since speaking with Steve, I’ve been thinking non-stop about the amount of vineyard land that must exist in California, capable of producing white wines of distinction if farmed specifically for that purpose.

I’ve always been one eager to go deeper down the rabbit hole, so now that I’m back in retail I’ve been going through more of Steve’s wines. Make sure to check out Steve’s value label Tendu for some of the most delicious, unique, and affordable CA wines I’ve ever tasted—especially the Mataro. It also has me taking a harder look at Jon’s book now that I’m buying wine for Mission, and simultaneously it has be thinking about another road trip, back up 101 through Santa Maria and the Central Coast, and into Sonoma and Napa once COVID settles down.

What else have I been missing?

-David Driscoll

Instagram Live Tomorrow With Charles Neal

Tomorrow at 5 PM at the @missionliquor Instagram account, I’ll be live with my good friend Charles Neal (pictured above on the right along with Emmanuel Camut).

We’ll be talking about Cognac, Armagnac, Calvados, wine, you name it.

See you there!

-David Driscoll

Dave's Faves - Feb 8th, 2021

I was never a huge Grateful Dead fan, but I remember the old Dick’s Picks cassettes that would make their way around the tape-trading circles, originally started by Grateful Dead tape vault archivist Dick Latvala. They were live recordings selected by him and released with permission from the band, based on his favorite performances.

I’m gonna take a queue from Dick and start doing Dave’s Faves, based on my favorite bottles in the store right now. I’ll update this from time to time, as new things come in; it’s 100% based on what I’m drinking at home, not so much what’s new and shiny.

Favorite White Wine Sub-$20: Tendu Clarksburg Cortese $15.95 - 100% Cortese, more often found in the inexpensive and cheerful whites of Piedmont, particularly Gavi! This white originates from the Lost Slough vineyard, located on the Sacramento River Delta - a site that benefits from cool breezes and good diurnal temperature variation, meaning the grapes retain excellent freshness. Fresh and fruity, but with a pleasant, deceptive oomph to the palate - orange peel, soft spice and stone fruits - fuzzy apricots and peaches with a hint of texture. Like all of Steve Matthiasson’s wines, it over-delivers, and is a delightful expression of this Italian grape.

Favorite Red Wine Sub-$20: Tendu Dunnigan Hills Mataro $15.95 - This isn’t just my favorite wine in the store right now, but many of the Mission staff members as well. Super light (lighter than German Pinot Noir), super juicy, fresh, snappy, and just absolutely delicious. Made entirely from organic Mourvedre (Mataro) from Yolo County, where Steve Matthiasson helped grow and source the fruit. The Tendu wines in general are a fun CA project and this one in particular really sings.

Favorite White Wine Sub-$50: 2019 Matthiasson Linda Vista Napa Chardonnay $26.95 - The Linda Vista Vineyard is just across the creek behind Steve’s house. The West Oak Knoll area where he lives is one of the classic Chardonnay spots in Napa—the Chardonnay from just behind them won the famous Paris tasting in 1976. The cool winds off the San Pablo Bay bring acidity and freshness, while the Napa sun gives flesh and ripeness. The 25-year old vines were originally planted by Beringer, certified organic. The wine is very Chablis-like. To me, it’s one of the best Chardonnays made in the state, if not THE VERY BEST.

Favorite Red Wine Sub-$50: 2018 Laurent Combier Crozes-Hermitage Cuvée LC $21.99 - I’ve bought this wine from Charles in previous vintages but it’s never tasted this good, and—considering the current 25% tariffs—the price is incredible. This is 100% Syrah made from some of the best fruit in the Northern Rhône for a price that KILLS!! Aged in cement eggs rather than new oak, it’s meant as a bistro wine with a juicier, more fruit-forward profile. BUT...this isn’t anything close to California Syrah. This is spicy with notes of cracked black peppercorns and hints of roasted meats. I’m buying a case for myself today as this is my new house red for February.

Favorite White Wine Sub-$100: 2019 Arnot Roberts Sanford & Benedict Vineyard Chardonnay $49.95 - Sanford & Benedict Vineyard creates some of CA’s best Chardonnays (Sandhi also comes to mind) and this expression from Arnot Roberts is up there with the best of them. There’s a reason this wine has huge scores from critics. You get a lot of white flowers and minerality, which is the vineyard’s calling card.

Favorite Red Wine Sub-$100: 2017 Pursued By Bear “Twin Bear” Cabernet Sauvignon $69.95 - Having had the chance to work with Kyle MacLachlan at my previous gig, it’s exciting to see how his portfolio has expanded since I last tasted these wines. The Twin Bear is a new expression that really blurs the line between polished and authentic. The wine is textbook Cab with all the classic dark fruit and herbaceous notes you want from a purist standpoint, but the wine is also as smooth as silk, which will appeal to new world fans. Great stuff.

Favorite Champagne: Paul Laurent Brut $29.95 - When you find a better deal than the Paul Laurent for a hair under thirty bucks, let me know. I’ll be waiting. Probably for a while.

Favorite Bourbon: Old Tub Bottled in Bond $18.95 - I haven’t been sipping much Bourbon at home lately, and I’ve been working through a huge case of Bundaberg ginger beer I got from Costco. Hence, I’ve been crushing Old Tub like it’s under $20 a bottle. Which it is.

Favorite Single Malt: Balcones “Mission Exclusive” Single European Oak Barrel Single Malt Whiskey $74.95 - See my blog from last week. This stuff is just stunning. We brought it over to a friend’s backyard dinner party this past Saturday and even my wife was drinking it straight at 64% ABV.

Favorite Tequila: G4 Blanco Tequila $39.95 - Not only am I drinking this Tequila in copious quantities, I’m gifting it all the time. A bottle to my father-in-law, a bottle to my parents, a bottle to my landlord, etc. I want everyone to have this at home.

Favorite Mezcal: NETA Madrecuixe + Espadín Ranulfo $134.99 - One of the most delicious bottles of agave spirit in the store at any price, this ensemble of Madrecuixe and Espadín agave produced only 246 bottles, distilled in June of 2019 by Ranulfo García Pacheco in Miahuatlán. The flavors are bright and sweetly spiced with citrus and an exotic savoriness that lingers on the palate for minutes after every sip.

Favorite Brandy: Camut 6 Year Old Calvados $99.99 - Not only my favorite brandy in the world, but also just my favorite spirit of any kind.

Favorite Rum: Hampden Great House 2020 $109.95 - Granted, I didn’t actually buy this bottle. I have a small sampler I’ve been draining very slowly, but man oh man is this delicious.

Favorite Liqueur: Bordiga Chiot Mont Amaro $27.95 - No matter how many new amari I taste these days, I still come back to the Chiot for two very simple reasons. 1) It’s low in alcohol and by the time I get to the amaro I’m usually a cocktail and a bottle of wine deep. I don’t need that much more. 2) It tastes so damn good.

Favorite Gin: Four Pillars Olive Branch Gin $36.95 - So good just straight out of the bottle. So good that I’m drinking it straight out of the bottle.

Favorite Vodka: Double Cross Vodka $13.95 - We got a pretty sizable drop of Double Cross at an absolutely ridiculous price, so this is gonna be my house vodka for most of 2021. 100% winter wheat, clean, and creamy.

-David Driscoll

Instagram Live Repost: Talking Wine & Music With Devo's Gerald Casale

For those of you who couldn’t tune in live, here’s the full conversation with Devo’s Gerald Casale from this past Wednesday. I’ll be live with French importer extraordinaire Charles Neal next week.

-David Driscoll

It Is Time For Balcones

Balcones Distillery has some of the tallest traditional pot stills around

There’s a fantastic article by Joseph V. Micallef from this past December in Forbes that asks the very loaded question: Is Balcones the best American single malt?

If you had asked me that question before coming back to retail this past November, I would have said: “No way.”

Not that Balcones hasn’t been making good whiskey for over a decade now. It’s that I’ve always associated the Waco, Texas distiller with a big, meaty style that blurs the lines between Bourbon and Scotch. If we’re going to talk apples to apples—Scotch versus American Scotch—I’d hold up a producer like Seattle’s Westland or Portland’s Westward as a more traditional comparison worthy of that title.

Having worked directly on single barrel picks with American single malt pioneers like Steve McCarthy from Clear Creek, Lance Winters & Dave Smith at St. George, and smaller producers from the midwest like Cut Spike, I feel like I’ve always had a pretty good grasp on what America had to offer in terms of the single malt market.

Yet, as Micallef points out in his article, there are now more single malt distilleries in America than Scotland! There’s probably someone out there making terrific single malt that I don’t know about, right?

Turns out there is. And it’s Balcones.

For the record, I hadn’t tasted one drop of Balcones whiskey in roughly four years before starting at Mission. As we all know, distilleries—especially smaller producers—can change their style, improve, alter their practices, and undertake any number of progressions over the course of a few months, let alone a few years. I don’t know that anything changed at Balcones in that time, but when we got the chance to purchase a single barrel for Mission this past November, I was absolutely floored by one particular sample: Barrel 16602 - New European Oak.

Dark as molasses, bold at 64.2% ABV, and emitting what is certainly the most potent aroma of crème brûlée I’ve nosed in any whiskey ever, I was gearing up to have my palate run-over like a Texas steer coming out of the rodeo gate. But that’s not at all what happened. Instead, all that European oak and inherent malty sweetness came together in exquisite harmony, forming one of the most decadent and hedonistic sensations of sweet nectar I’ve ever tasted in an American single malt.

Aged for a mere 44 months, you’d be hard-pressed to consider this 3+ year old single malt whisky immature. Generally, I find peated malts to be more precocious as the extra smoke often helps disguise the whisky’s more jagged edges, but there’s no smoke in this cask of Balcones. The spirit stands alone in all its glory, basked in the richness and sweet spice of all that new European oak. It’s absolutely perfect right where it is.

What’s striking about this particular cask of Balcones (now exclusively sold at Mission) is how much more it tastes like Scottish single malt than any other American version I’ve tried, despite the more extreme Texas aging conditions and bolder flavor profile. Within the blink of an eye, I went from thinking of Balcones as more of an American individualist to—yes, perhaps—the best traditional single malt our country has to offer. There’s nothing else I’ve tasted with this much richness, this much viscosity, and this much balance acquired in less than ten years, let alone four.

But clearly I’m late to the party here. It may be that every cask of Balcones tastes as good as this one does, and I’m simply freaking out from sheer naiveté. Or this could simply be one of the most exquisite single barrels Balcones has made and we just got lucky they offered it to us. Either way, I need to taste more Balcones. Pronto.

If it’s been a while since you’ve last tasted Balcones single malt, I can promise you one thing: this whiskey will absolutely electrify you. I haven’t been this excited about a new American single barrel in quite some time.

-David Driscoll

How To Calvados

As I mentioned on Monday’s post, I’ve got a ton of fun new things coming in from France this week, some of which were imported by my friend Charles Neal exclusively for a handful of bars and restaurants to make cocktails. As I also mentioned, I was on hand for a number of these blending occasions to lend whatever council I could, so let’s start today with Calvados and the new “Selection” from Domaine du Manoir de Montreuil (we also have the standard “Reserve” (white label) in stock as well). All of these photos are from December of 2015, when Charles and I went in quest of more supplies.

Whenever I bring up Calvados—apple brandy from the Normandy region of France—I always get the same question: How do I enjoy it?

Smart ass answer: you pour it in a glass and drink it.

But in all seriousness, let me break it down. Whenever we blend anything on these trips, we start with a pricepoint we want to hit and then we spend most of the afternoon finding the most drinkable base vintage at the cost we need, before adding in older brandies for texture. The Montreuil “Selection” was indeed blended with younger brandies at a higher proof so that the fruit still pops when mixed into a cocktail. My favorite Calvados cocktail is a twist on the Jack Rose called the Pan-American Clipper, but to be honest: you can still sip the “Selection” straight out of a glass and be completely satisfied. The quality is fantastic, the apple flavors really sing, and if you add a few other elements to the experience you can really make the most of the moment.

Most of my favorite Calvados moments were spent outside on a cold winter’s day, so February is the perfect time to pour yourself a warming glass of the Norman spirit. If you live near an orchard or a farm, bring a flask and go for a walk. Calvados is one of the world’s true farm spirits in that the symbiosis of animals and apple trees plays a role in the quality. The livestock looks after the weeds and the fertilizer, so that the trees can remain healthy and produce the best possible fruit.

Drinking Calvados by a warm fire is also a fine experience. Most of the time, because it’s cold outside, we huddle around the wood-fired pot still for warmth while we taste and discuss the various selections. Since we’re all stuck eating outdoors anyway, why not fire up the old grill, invite some friends to social distance in a responsible way, and open up a bottle of Calvados to start?

What to serve? Anything, really; but if you want to do it the way the Normans do, the more meat the better. Calvados loves rich, fatty meats. Get some terrine, some rillettes, some sausage—whatever you can manage. You’ll be amazed at how the Calvados cuts through all that meatiness and adds to the overall experience. There’s a reason apple sausage exists.

If you’re going meatless, go the cheese route. What better to pair with Norman brandy than Norman cheese? I could do Camembert and Calvados all day long. It’s a fantastically decadent treat, even better if you add a bottle of Norman cider or some Pommeau.

You don’t need to be in France to enjoy Calvados. You just need to get yourself a bottle. The rest will take care of itself.

-David Driscoll