La Ribaude

The Pays d'Auge is Normandy's cider heartland: a rolling country of clay over chalk, hedgerows and high-stem orchards grazed by cattle. The family farms around 150 hectares of orchards, two-thirds of them in the small bittersweet cider apples that give Pays d'Auge cider its tannin and depth, and some pear trees that are reckoned to be three hundred years old.

The fruit is pressed on site and the juices are either bottled fresh, as with the apple juice, or fermented slowly through the winter for the ciders and poiré, which take their sparkle from the natural fermentation in bottle. The same house runs six stills for its Calvados Pays d'Auge and pommeau, so the whole chain from orchard to glass happens within a few hundred metres.

The Deschamps make every cuvée in a conventional and an organic version and have had their orchards certified organic. For La Cave the connection is personal: Frederick grew up in this corner of Normandy, and the poiré and the juice are the taste of home, the bottles that go on the table for the people who are not drinking wine.

The Distillerie du Houley was founded in 1953 as an independent family business and is today one of the last large Pays d'Auge distilleries still in family hands. Daniel Deschamps ran it for more than thirty years from 1974, and the next generation of the family runs it now, exporting as far as the Nordic countries while keeping the farm gate open for visitors.

Poiré: sparkling pear cider, pale, gently sweet and low in alcohol, for brunch or dessert. Jus de pomme: pure pressed Normandy apple juice, cloudy and unsweetened, the house apéritif for children and drivers.