Keeping the Doctor Away

During my shopping spree yesterday I finally found calvados, so I pawned one of the cats and bought a bottle. It's Daron with a label entirely in French, no English for the barbarians. I know what the word FINE (in all caps) means.

I decided to do a second day of taste testing and see if this expensive all-French apple brandy is better than the all-American applejack I bought a few weeks ago.

Much as I hate to give a thumb's up to the nation of French fries and waffles (well, that's Belgium, but they speak French), I have to say that calvados has more of the soul of the apple than applejack. Or maybe that was just the seeds talking. You can smell apple when you pick up the glass, and it has a strong apple foundation. Probably not Granny Smith, since it's French.

With applejack, on the other hand, you don't get the apple sniff, and the apple taste is much more subdued, almost to the point of there not being one. It tastes more like a brandy and less like fermented apples. The calvados is lighter.

I'm not sure I'll be sipping calvados after dinner, but it would work great in a dessert and probably blend just as great in a cocktail. Or go good with French fries.