An eco-friendly
spirit

In this time of cli­mate emer­gency, these 3 mil­lion trees act as excel­lent captors of green­house gases. Some estim­ate that the carbon sequest­ra­tion in a cider or perry apple orch­ard is in the range of 35 to 50 tonnes of carbon/hectare over a 25-year period.

The wide diversity of fruit vari­et­ies ensures the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the har­vests and a high res­ist­ance to cli­mate vari­ations. Orch­ards also create hab­it­ats for living organ­isms. Their hori­zont­al and ver­tic­al struc­ture provides a diversity of hab­it­ats and resources to encour­age biod­iversity: shel­ter in the winter, repro­duc­tion, food.

In terms of water usage, irrig­a­tion is pro­hib­ited in the orch­ards and the water con­sumed in the making of Calvados remains fairly low. A large volume of water is used for the wash­ing of the fruit, but this is very often in a closed loop.

Lastly, orch­ards have vari­ous advant­ages when it comes to pre­serving the soil and com­batting erosion: strong, dur­able root sys­tems that enable a good fix­a­tion of the soil, per­man­ent grass cover in the rows and inter-row areas, little plough­ing of the soil, etc. In France, water erosion is respons­ible for the loss of 1.5 tonnes/hectare of soil each year.

In addi­tion, the AOC eco­sys­tem provides an import­ant guar­an­tee that the local area, native spe­cies and tra­di­tion­al know-how are being respec­ted. Wheth­er cer­ti­fied organ­ic or not, Calvados pro­duc­tion ensures a low level of phytosan­it­ary product use with mixed farm­ing ensur­ing that nat­ur­al fer­til­isa­tion takes place, thanks not­ably to livestock.

The amount of lost fruit is rel­at­ively low through­out the pro­duc­tion chain: it is estim­ated to be less than 5%. In the Calvados industry, the pro­du­cers are uncon­cerned about the aes­thet­ics of the fruit (in terms of its shape, colour or con­form­ity) and phytosan­it­ary products are there­fore not needed to con­trol the fruit’s appearance.

Lastly, the pro­cessing of apples and pears pro­duces many by-products includ­ing pectins, animal feed (for live­stock in par­tic­u­lar), fer­til­isers or anaer­obic digestion.

The supply of fruit to the dis­til­ler­ies is gen­er­ally form­al­ised by means of a con­tract, which also provides some secur­ity and con­tinu­ity to all parties.

These days many dis­til­ler­ies are now act­ively engaged in some form of “spir­its tour­ism” activity.

Every year, nearly 300,000 vis­it­ors from France and abroad visit the Normandy dis­til­ler­ies, some of which even boast “Entre­prises du Pat­rimoine Vivant” (Living Her­it­age Com­pany) status.

With private tours, cock­tail work­shops, pic­nics and vari­ous other activ­it­ies on offer, tour­ists are learn­ing more about Normandy spirit pro­duc­tion and under­stand­ing the her­it­age value of the orch­ards that are an integ­ral part of the countryside.

Because in Normandy, these orch­ards really do con­trib­ute to the aes­thet­ics of the land­scape and have a very strong sym­bol­ic and spir­itu­al value. They are cre­at­ing more and more leis­ure and tour­ism oppor­tun­it­ies that con­trib­ute to the vital­ity and dynam­ism of the local area.