The art of sustainable Calvados at the Domaine des 5 Autels

Could you introduce the Domaine des 5 Autels?

The Domaine des 5 Autels has been a family-run estate for four gen­er­a­tions. Foun­ded at the begin­ning of the 20^th cen­tury by my great-grand­fath­er, it was trans­formed into an organ­ic farm in 1967 under the guid­ance of Maurice, my grandfather.
In the 1980s, my father planted 13 hec­tares of orch­ards and expan­ded the pro­duc­tion of organ­ic ciders and Calvados, pri­or­it­iz­ing nat­ur­al meth­ods without sulfites or chem­ic­al additives.
In 2019, I took over the estate with Pierre. We met while work­ing at Alstom, where we were both employ­ees. As we talked, we dis­covered that our family his­tor­ies were con­nec­ted: his great-grand­fath­er was the veter­in­ari­an for my grand­par­ents in Normandy. This coin­cid­ence brought us closer, and togeth­er, we decided to bring fresh energy to the business.
Today, we remain deeply com­mit­ted to our envir­on­ment­al values. Our goal is to achieve carbon-neut­ral pro­duc­tion quickly, includ­ing a shift to reusable bottles and the gradu­al replace­ment of oil heat­ing with a wood-fired boiler powered by trim­mings from our orch­ards. Finally, we are proud to offer a 100% organ­ic range of Calvados, aged up to 25 years.

Have you always wanted to take over the family estate?

No, when I was young­er, I really wanted to do some­thing else. I star­ted a career as an engin­eer, but after 15 years work­ing as an employ­ee in a large com­pany, I felt the need to bring more mean­ing to my pro­fes­sion­al journey.
The idea began to grow when, with my sib­lings, we had to think about the future of the family busi­ness. There wasn’t really a clear way to pass it on, but it was hard for me to just cut ties with our history.
The real turn­ing point came one day when I walked into a fine gro­cery store in La Rochelle and saw cider products being sold at much higher prices than ours, thanks to better mar­ket­ing. I thought to myself that, with our artis­an­al and sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion meth­ods, our ciders and Calvados deserved much better pro­mo­tion. This frus­tra­tion even­tu­ally led me to con­tin­ue the work star­ted by my par­ents and my grand­fath­er before them.

What is the main challenge for Calvados to grow both in France and internationally?

The biggest chal­lenge for our cat­egory is evolving its image. We need to repos­i­tion Calvados as a premi­um spirit, with more mod­ern­ity and impact­ful com­mu­nic­a­tion. Inter­na­tion­ally, Calvados is some­times over­shad­owed by other spir­its, like Cognac, which bene­fit from very influ­en­tial brands. What we might be lack­ing is that key player who can elev­ate the market.

How would you introduce Calvados to a friend?

Calvados has great poten­tial in cock­tails, espe­cially as an aper­itif. It’s all about timing, and I believe people are more open to trying new fla­vors earli­er in the even­ing rather than at the end of a meal.
It’s also cru­cial to show­case the diversity of Calvados. With the wide vari­ety of cider apples avail­able, we pro­duce a unique spirit, and cock­tails are an excel­lent way to high­light this aro­mat­ic rich­ness to a broad­er audience.

Do you have a favorite cocktail?

Right now, I really enjoy a Moscow Mule with Calvados – it’s deli­cious and very simple: 4 cl of Calvados “Le Songe” topped with ginger beer and ice. Maybe we could call it the “Nor­man’Mule”?