February 6, 2017

A Note from Maxime Toutain of Normandy’s Calvados Toutain

We are a small domain which we manage ourselves, my mother Corinne and myself. My mother manages the bottling, all the preparation of orders and all the administrative parts tied to our clients. I manage the production, the distillation, the aging, and the assemblages as well as the administrative parts tied to Calvados. Together we manage our clients, and we both know the status of our respective responsibilities. And we decide everything together. Our wish is to preserve the human and qualitative dimension of our domain and of our production of Calvados.

In our orchards, we have a small herd of about 35 cows “Blonde de Aquitaine,” but they don’t belong to us because we rent the grass in the orchards to farmers. My grandparents had their own herd of cows “Blonde de Aquitaine” until 1998 when they sold them and started renting the grass in the orchards.

From our trees, we produce on average 4000 liters of pure Calvados alcohol each year and we commercialize about 2000 liters of pure alcohol per year. We have 5 different products: Fine (3 years ageing minimum); Vieux (8 years ageing minimum); Hors d’Ages (15 years ageing minimum); Vieille Réserve (30 years ageing minimum); Très Vieille Réserve (45 years ageing minimum).

We sell 50% of our Calvados to cafés, hotels and restaurants in France; 30% is sold at the domain through our front door; and 20% of the production is exported to Holland, Italy, England, Germany, the US, Israel, and Japan.

We are really happy to collaborate with people who take real pleasure in commercializing a product like ours. If ever your customers are in Normandy, we would welcome them with pleasure (and we are lucky enough to be in one of the most beautiful parts of Normandy…!).