Introducing the Natural Ciders of Julien Frémont!

10/29/2008 -

Last winter we accompanied the folks at Louis/Dressner Selections on a ramble through Normandy and discovered the wonderfully delicious ciders of Julien Frémont. Monsieur Frémont works on a breathtakingly beautiful farm in the Pays d’Auge, Calvados, a place where cows and apple trees have defined the landscape for more time than can be remembered. It is green, lush, softly hilly, the soil rich clay with silex, and the climate humid and mild.

Frémont says that he would gladly do without his cows, about 80 when you count the youngsters born each year, and just deal with apple trees and apples, and the cider he makes from them. But he knows that cows and trees take care of each another, that his trees would not grow and age the way they do, or his apples taste the same, without the cows.

The farm has 45HA of grazing fields, 12HA of which are planted with apple trees. The cows mow the grass, prune the trees in summer and eat the fallen apples, until it’s time for the harvest from late September until November. The apples are picked by hand in large baskets, then put into 50KG bags. The trees are a mix of old local varieties of acidic, late ripening apples, some of which exist only in this part of Normandy. The soil is well-drained argilo-silex which gives small apples with concentrated flavors. Fermentations are slow, with only wild yeasts and the ciders stabilize naturally, mostly in old Calvados barrels.