Adrien Camut Calvados 6 year (41%)

N: cream cheese, or blueberry yogurt, or a mild bleu. Strawberries and other light berries as much as apple.

P: moldier bleu on the palate; sharper, bright young fruit (apples and berries both), sorta crunchy and fresh and juicy too. The combination of mold and fresh fruit is pretty nice

86

Adrien Camut Calvados 12 year (41%)

N: deeper and darker, but still berry yogurt, or black cherry. Bleu cheese again, with hints of balsamic

P: slightly numbing, slightly medicinal bleu cheese. Salad with apples and pecans and bleu cheese. Dry, dark berries, elderberry maybe. This loses some of the fresh fruit, but not much, and more or less makes up for it with additional tannic structure

85

Adrien Camut Calvados 18 year (41%)

N: dark berries and yogurt still, but much more medicinal. Adjacent to some tropically aged Savanna rums (in, say, the L’Absolu series)

P: medicinal blackberries, blackberry seeds, some darker herbal notes. Moldy cheese, too, but less of it, and the acid is tamed in favor of density. To return to the Savanna comparison, where I tend to prefer younger and brighter examples to the heavier dark berry medicine of the teenaged tropically aged ones, I’m not sure that what’s added with more age here makes up for what’s lost

84

Adrien Camut Calvados Reserve d’Adrien 35-40 year  (40%)

N: balsamic apple butter, sweet bleu, cooked blueberry, rangoons in duck sauce

P: creamy, balsamic apple butter again, sweet warming spice and all, with a moldy, almost spicy edge, and that cream cheese-duck sauce element

88

Adrien Camut Calvados Prestige 50-55 year (40%)

N: deeper balsamic, with a saltier savory edge. Polished leather and farmy earth. The fruit is blueberry and apple again, fermented as much as cooked, and reduced to a savory drizzle

P: sweet and savory, blueberry balsamic drizzle, purple yam, dark leather akin to old malt, and  sharply salty bleu cheese carrying the finish for minutes. Shooting strong in several dimensions, and seems to have all the benefits of 50 years in barrel with no trouble from the oak

91