Pastry chef Christine Ferber’s not-too-sweet kugelhopf recipe has just a few choice raisins per slice. The classic Alsatian Christmas cake is baked in a distinctive ring mold. Traditional kugelhopf molds are available online, but in a pinch, a standard fluted cake pan works, too. Note: Don’t rush the mixing and fermentation periods for this dough; the flavor and open-crumb structure of the delicate cake are at their best when allowed to develop slowly.

Featured in: The Incredible Kugelhopf of Christine Ferber

Note: Fresh cake yeast, which dissolves well in cool liquid, is the ideal leavening for heavily enriched, high-hydration doughs like this one. Look for it in the fridge or freezer section of well-stocked grocery stores. Can’t find it? Substitute one third the quantity by weight of instant dry yeast; in this case, 1 2⁄3 teaspoons.

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A recipe from the late French winemaker and chef Lulu Peyraud, this traditional Provençal tapenade is delicious when spread on little toasts. Tapenade will keep in the fridge for a month or more, topped with a thin layer of olive oil.

Featured in: “Remembering Lulu Peyraud, the Cooking Queen of Provence.”

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Guadeloupe-born actress and cookbook author Suzy Palatin adapted the traditional Belgian method of making frites to land on this superlative potato recipe, which she serves to her chef friends at dinner parties in Paris. The technique involves a double fry—the first to cook the frites through, the second to turn them golden brown. The 20-minute rest in between ensures that the french fries are as dry as possible before a second bath—worth the additional step when the extra crispy fries are paired with creamy aioli or sauce Andalouse as Belgians do.

Featured in “Are These the World’s Best French Fries?” by Sophie Brickman.

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When Lulu Peyraud invited me to lunch with her family one fine sunny Provençal afternoon, the welcome was genuine. From the first moment, I felt cared for and at ease, as though I had never really experienced true hospitality before. Lulu immediately struck me as a generous soul. Then in her late 60s, she was vivacious and charmingly down to earth (as she still is).

I had already been impressed with many tales of the extraordinary Peyraud family and their vineyards and fabled winery, Domaine Tempier, located near the town of Bandol, a half-hour drive from Marseille. I’d seen photographs of the domaine and sampled a goodly amount of their wines, but in California. Alice Waters had given them pride of place on the wine list at Chez Panisse, where I worked at the time. Alice fell for the Peyraud treatment in the early 1970s and established a lifelong bond with Lulu. She still visits at least once a year. The Berkeley wine merchant Kermit Lynch was so smitten, he bought a house near Bandol and now spends half the year there.

The late Richard Olney, the influential American expat food writer, was also part of the extended family. The much-admired author of several cookbooks on simple French cooking and wine, he was persuaded by Alice to write a cookbook that would capture Lulu’s food and style. Drawn from a series of interviews intended to translate her words into written recipes (Lulu herself has never relied on them), the result was Lulu’s Provençal Table, published in 1994.

But the lunch I describe here took place in 1984. We were a party of eight: Lulu and her husband, Lucien, their two winemaking sons and their wives, and a mutual friend.

We began in the garden with a glass of cool rosé, a bowl of radishes, and little toasts topped with inky black tapenade. This radically elemental aperitif was pure Provence.

In the old dining room, Lulu constantly flashed a mischievous and knowing smile, presiding over the simple but sumptuous lunch she had prepared, which kept us happily at the table for hours.

The menu—still ingrained in memory—was perfectly conceived. The vintage white linens, the old silver and glassware, and the heavy antique chairs looked fittingly natural and echoed the age of the solid Provençal farmhouse. Yet the meal wasn’t in the least formal. Lucien, the family patriarch (and the driving force behind the winery), poured the wine as Lulu passed a salad of roasted yellow peppers and rice dressed with fruity olive oil and vinegar. We lingered while Jean-Marie, the elder son, stepped outside to grill the quail over a fire of vine cuttings. Upon his return, knives, forks, and fingers gleefully attacked the grilled birds, the smoky aroma of thyme and garlic perfumed the room, and the Bandol Rouge flowed. But the meal was far from over. There would still be local goat cheeses, a fruit tart (maybe apricot) for dessert, coffee, and little glasses of marc de Provence, the fiery local variant of grappa. The afternoon was punctuated with lively stories, earthy jokes, and a genial, relaxed intimacy. Afterward, everyone retired for a postprandial nap.

This was the first of numerous ad hoc lessons learned from Lulu. They weren’t so much instructions in cooking as demonstrations of how to live. More than anything else, Lulu has reinforced for me how life and food—and wine—are intertwined. And how, more often than not, the most satisfying food is the least complicated and the best cooks are not necessarily found in restaurant kitchens.

Simply put, Lulu’s food embodies the best of French home cooking.

Since the quails were grilled outdoors, it hadn’t been necessary that day to use the enormous fireplace that spans one wall of Lulu’s kitchen. On future visits, there would be saffron-and-garlic-perfumed bouillabaisse simmering in a copper cauldron over a crackling live fire. Or a leg of lamb turning slowly on a spit, or grilled stuffed squid.

The kitchen, amazingly, has not changed much since the house was built more than two centuries ago. Among the very few nods to modernity are a tiny fridge and gas cooktop stuck in a pantry closet, and a few well-used but seemingly out-of-place electric conveniences: a coffeepot, a blender, a mixer. (Well, and of course electric lights.) Aside from the fireplace and its well-worn iron tools, there are a few heavy mortars, a large wooden worktable, and a collection of earthenware cooking vessels and colorful pottery from the region. Sitting together with Lulu peeling garlic or chopping wild herbs from the surrounding hillside feels so utterly peaceful and calming. With the brilliant morning sun pouring through the kitchen windows, it seems almost like a Provençal postcard cliché.

Lulu cooks with straightforward Provençal simplicity and elegant restraint. When I think of her kitchen, I picture marinated sardines, grilled eggplants and peppers, basil-infused vegetable soupe au pistou, home-cured anchovies and olives—and olive oil, naturally. I see fresh melons, juicy figs and ripe tomatoes. Vegetable tians of every sort. Small violet-hued artichokes, tender enough to eat raw.

Of course, this kind of cooking depends on daily visits to open-air markets. To accompany Lulu on one of these shopping forays and see her in action is inspiring. She knows what she wants and goes after it, whether it is skinny haricots verts or fresh shiny mackerel. Her smile seduces even the grumpiest merchant.

Lulu has always been remarkably self-reliant. She still hasn’t given up her solo afternoon swim and has been living in this house, in which she raised seven children, for more than 75 years. Only recently has one of her daughters moved in to help. Her other grown children live nearby, and there are flocks of doting grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

At 98, Lulu is a bit too advanced in years to climb the stairs, so she depends on one of those electric Easy Climber chair lifts, un monte-escalier. Now, if you’re having after-dinner drinks with her in the salon and she’s ready to retire for the evening, there is a new routine. Perched in the chair, she pushes the button and slowly ascends. The lift faces you as it moves so you see her smiling broadly as she floats upward.

Get the recipe for Provençal Stuffed Squid »
Get the recipe for Quail Grilled over Vine Cuttings with Tapenade Toasts »
Get the recipe for Black Olive Tapenade »
Get the recipe for Provençal Vegetable Tian »
Get the recipe for Spring Vegetable Stew (Estouffade Printanière) »

The Wines of Domaine Tempier

The first Peyraud family wine I drank was a stunning 1974 Bandol Rouge, and after one sip, I knew I had to import it. The next time I traveled to France, I made an appointment to visit the Peyrauds at their vineyard in Bandol, a small appellation in Provence. It’s probably best known for its rosé, but in fact it produces some of Provence’s most impressive red wines. I showed up at a nearby hotel and was informed I no longer had a reservation. “You’re the American?” the concierge asked. “Lulu canceled your room. You’re supposed to stay at Domaine Tempier.” That’s the kind of person Lulu is—everyone’s a friend. And once you get into wine, you’ll see that the personality of the makers goes right into the personality of their wine. Domaine Tempier wines are gutsy, sunbaked, meant for partying—and party we did! I fell in love with the area and bought a house about five minutes away from the Peyrauds. I now see Lulu whenever I’m in town. To this day, when she’s thirsty, she reaches for a glass of wine, not water. “I don’t want to rust,” she says. — Kermit Lynch

2011 Classique
$109, leduwines.com
A personal favorite because it is so lively and fresh on the palate—I call it rambunctious. Drink now or later.

2013 La Miguoa
$55, lawineco.com
A big vintage for the reds. Dense, firm, meaty. I’ll hold off about 10 years before digging into my stash of bottles.

2015 Bandol Rosé
$45, vintryfinewines.com
Lots of fruit, flesh, and flavor—not at all your little summertime quaffer. You’ll enjoy the 2015 year-round. It will sell out, so order quick.

WATCH: How to Prep Squid

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The crust of this striking dessert—named for Les Landes, the region where it is beloved and ubiquitous—curls up into jagged shards as it cooks, like a crown. To channel pure Landaise tradition, brush the top with one tablespoon of duck fat before baking.

Featured in: Biarritz and the Cuisine of the Sun

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This easy and elegant mussel recipe comes from chef Hélène Darroze’s family in the southwestern French commune of Langon. The meaty bivalves are richer than clams and more substantial than oysters. Both lemons and limes brighten the dish with acidity, and Piment d’Espelette adds a hit of spice.

Featured in: “Biarritz and the Cuisine of the Sun.”

This Is What Your Mussels Have Been Missing

Add interest to your next mussel recipe with a splash of French anisette »

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Renaison, France, November 10, 2015

Pierre Troisgros is at a table set among the vines of Domaine Sérol’s Les Blondins vineyard pouring a bottle of its Éclat de Granite: one glass for himself, one for his son, and one for his grandson. The patriarch of three generations of chefs, Pierre once carried the baton of French cuisine nouvelle (alongside his brother Jean and good friend Paul Bocuse).

In 1954, Jean and Pierre took over the family restaurant—originally opened by their parents in the Hôtel Moderne in Roanne, it later became Maison Troisgros. The brothers felt it was time to reinvent, to pull back from the heavy sauces of cuisine classique and look to the ingredients themselves for inspiration. In 1968, their restaurant earned three Michelin stars, and in the 48 years since, it hasn’t lost one. Now Pierre’s son Michel has taken charge of the kitchen, and grandson César works there too.

These three Troisgros men—whom I assembled to film an episode of the TV series Chef’s Table, focusing on Michel—represent the past, present, and future of the French culinary landscape. They gathered on this brisk fall day for a humble picnic lunch, snacking on fresh bread and a cured ham that Pierre brought along. They reminisced about the past—more than two decades ago, Pierre planted grapes with Robert Sérol in this vineyard—and talked about their new adventure.

Soon they’ll leave their famous kitchen to build a new, bigger restaurant in nearby Louche, complete with a huge garden. There, it will eventually be up to César to accomplish what generations of Troisgros chefs have done before him—to push French cuisine into the future.

David Gelb is the creator of Netflix’s Chef’s Table. The second season begins streaming on May 27.

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For centuries, the pride of the city of Bordeaux has been the wines produced in the vineyards that surround it and the magnificent 18th-century limestone façades lining the Garonne River. But starting June 1, the Porte de la Lune—the southwestern city’s lyrical sobriquet describes the way it hugs the river banks in a crescent—will have a racy new landmark: the €81-million new wine museum, La Cité du Vin. This architecturally provocative glass-and-metal building, built on the edge of the redeveloping docklands district by the Parisian firm XTU, has a curling shape, perhaps inspired by either a glass of wine or something a dog might leave on the sidewalk. In any case, the museum represents an embrace of a more modern and accessible way of thinking about wine.

“Our goal is to tell the story of wine everywhere in the world, which is why each year a different wine-producing country will be the subject of special expositions, lectures, and wine-tastings,” says Sylvie Cazes, president of the museum.

La Cité du Vin is the culmination of a spectacular 15-year renovation and rehabilitation of the historic center of Bordeaux, which has given a game-changing boost to the city’s once quiet and conservative restaurant scene.

“Bordeaux is in the midst of a gastronomic evolution,” says chef Tanguy Laviale, a Parisian who arrived two years ago and whose excellent restaurant-and-wine shop Garopapilles (62 rue l’Abbé de l’Epée) is the city’s most popular recent opening. The menu changes regularly, but dishes like pan-roasted scallops on a bed of shiitake mushrooms and parsnip cream, and veal mignon with poached pears, cockles, and squid ink gnocchi show off Laviale’s style.

At Miles (33 rue du Cancera), an inventive modern bistro menu includes veal tartare with a sesame oil—marinated egg yolk and tapioca chips, as well as swordfish with Madras curry leaf gelée and coconut-cilantro gremolata. L’Etoile de Mer du Petit Commerce (19–22 rue Parlement Saint-Pierre), where chef Stéphane Carrade cooks dishes like grilled red mullet with herring caviar and sea urchins, is this gastronomic city’s best seafood restaurant.

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It’s an August night in Biarritz, the pedestrian-only streets packed in equal measure with bronzed surfers and linen-suited high rollers. The sun is still bright in the sky, and the sound of clinking glasses, laughter, and music is layered on a thrum of waves lapping at the shore. Off rue des Halles, in a kitchen goods store turned occasional pop-up restaurant, the warm scent of star anise and cardamom settles over a long table filled with old friends. Chef Hélène Darroze, blond hair shoved under a Panama hat, has succumbed to the lure of the stove and decided to make a simple dessert of figs cooked in butter and spices. Yes, she’s on vacation, but so what?

She peels a huge curl of orange rind, which blooms and perfumes the air the minute it hits the butter. Not to be outdone, Bob Jourdan, the store’s proprietor, longtime friend of the Darroze family, and the evening’s alleged host, flicks off the lights and brings out a pineapple with a sparkler on top. A fuzzy recording of “L’Hymne de L’Aviron Bayonnais,” the rousing song of the Bayonne rowing team—a sort of unofficial anthem of southwest France—comes on the stereo, and everyone joins in. Hélène’s younger daughter Quiterie runs in from outside, her brow furrowed.

“Maman, qu’est-ce qui se passe?” she asks, voice raised over the din. Hélène pulls the seven-year-old onto her lap and comforts her with a fig. Quiterie grins and settles in, happy and unfazed to be serenaded by her mother’s friends over midnight desserts garnished by sparklers, as if this happens every night of her life.

Mussels with Herbed Vinaigrette (Moules Vinaigrette)

Hélène used to come to this beach town on the Basque coast in the summers as a child—she grew up in the neighboring region of Les Landes. Here, a half-hour drive from the Spanish border, streets overflow with noshers who wash down cheesy toasts with ice-cold txakoli, a crisp Basque white wine that hits the glass from an arm’s length away, to stir up its gentle effervescence. Fresh fish and oysters, shells so big they fit in your palm like softballs, are hauled in each morning a few miles down the beach in Saint-Jean-de-Luz before traveling to Les Halles, the main Biarritz market, where they’re stacked on ice next to heaps of dark red fraises des bois and festoons of red piment d’Espelette. And here you can become so enchanted with the cerulean blue of the ocean, its waves breaking as if on a timer, that when you finally turn your back on the water to get your bearings after a beach walk, you might find yourself in an au naturel cove by mistake and have to scamper along the rocky shore away from naked Frenchmen, wincing at every step.

This is Biarritz life, and Hélène kicks off her espadrilles and slips into its informality as seemingly effortlessly as she decided to start a family on her own.

“I got to a certain age, wanted children, and there was no man,” she explains simply. So she adopted first Charlotte, now age nine, then Quiterie, from Vietnam, a country she’d long loved because of a great aunt who lived in Hanoi.

It’s the same gutsy attitude that allowed her to take over the family restaurant, Chez Darroze, in 1995, after three generations with a Darroze male at the helm, then head to the city to strike out on her own, and climb the ranks of a male-dominated industry.

She splits her time between two eponymous Michelin-starred restaurants, one on the Left Bank in Paris, the other at the Connaught Hotel in London. Until the two girls started formal school, they accompanied their mother back and forth on the Chunnel every week, because, pourquoi pas?

At her restaurants, she wows diners with dishes such as oyster tartare and white coco bean velouté, topped with caviar jelly, osetra caviar and a glinting flourish of edible silver paper. But the food-as-art, the reductions, the silky-smooth purées bolstered with generous glugs of cream and swirls of butter, are all rooted here, in the southwest of France. Though surely there is adequate poultry nearer to Paris or London, she sources special yellow chickens from Les Landes—“They are corn-fed and roam freely in the forest, making them expensive, but worth it”—red mullet and tuna from Saint-Jean-de-Luz, buttery sheep’s milk cheese known as Brebis from the Basque region.

“The cuisine of my home, of the south, is the cuisine of the sun,” she says.

Marc Darroze lives in a converted farmhouse in the tiny town of Roquefort, down the road from the family’s former restaurant, where both he and his sister grew up.

“When I’m here, I have a religion,” Hélène says, standing in Marc’s kitchen, prepping for an informal dinner with extended family that will include her father and uncle, both serious and revered chefs from the old guard. “I season everything with piment d’Espelette and cook everything in duck fat.”

She tips a ladle of fat over a tray of tomatoes, each stuffed with a filling pour les dieux—a mixture of foie gras, duck confit, and black truffle juice—then adds a hefty dash of powdered piment d’Espelette, perches each tiny tomato hat back on top, and shoves the tray in the oven. Piment d’Espelette is nearly ubiquitous in Basque dishes and appears in neighboring regions too—by law, true ones must be grown in one of ten designated communities in Basque country. The peppers are used fresh, puréed, pickled, or dried and powdered, lending their mild heat and signature vermilion stain to everything they touch.

Les Landes, about an hour’s drive north of Biarritz, is as known for its duck as Basque country is for its fish, and fittingly, above Marc’s kitchen sink is a framed black-and-white photo of a regal canard, surveying the kingdom below its beak. Outside, sheep lazily chew on grass in a nearby enclosure, a warm cat stretches out in a patch of sunlight, and Charlotte and Quiterie, hair wet from the pool and clad in sundresses and tiny wellies, pick wildflowers for the night’s dinner table. Hélène’s father, Francis, quietly cleans squid in the sink while her mother, Annick, tidies up, and outside at the table by the pool, Uncle Claude, formerly of a Michelin-starred restaurant in Langon (his son Jean-Charles now runs it), painstakingly shucks mussels for his summer signature, moules vinaigrette. He’s donned a white apron over his pressed checked button-down. (“But I cannot cook without an apron!” he’d protested after arriving.)

All is calm in the kitchen, the older generation ceding any authority it once had to the next—“We worked together for one year, and it was difficult,” is all Hélène will say about her and her father—until Claude shrieks from outside.

Tomatoes Stuffed with Foie Gras, Duck Confit, and Chanterelles (Tomates Farcies)

“Viens!” he calls to his wife, who rushes outside, alarmed. He motions to his brow. Rolling her eyes, she fetches a towel and delicately dabs his forehead. He shucks throughout.

Even as a young girl, Hélène was unafraid to throw her toque into the ring with her elders.

“I would make a whole trolley of pastries when my parents had guests over,” she remembers. “The dream everyone had was that I’d take over my mother’s pharmacy and my brother Marc would take over the restaurant. But it didn’t work out that way.”

Marc was more enamored with the family’s armagnac business that his father had started in 1974 (“My grandfather was very harsh,” he says, deflecting the reason why he avoided the kitchen). He studied wine for years, took the helm in 1996, and now sells the regional honey-colored brandy in 50 countries. It was Hélène who, after university, headed to Monaco to see if she could work in the office of Alain Ducasse’s Le Louis XV. Sensing innate culinary talent, he persuaded her to work on the line.

“He used to say I was a terrorist of taste,” she recalls, grinning to reveal a charming gap between her two front teeth. After her stint with Ducasse, she returned home to officially take over her father’s restaurant and became the first woman head chef in her family line. Her grandmother, who’d passed down the stuffed tomato recipe Hélène now cooks in her honor, was a chef, too, “but in the shadow of my grandfather, ” Hélène says. In 1999, she decided to relocate to Paris and open her own restaurant, a move her family did not initially understand.

“For them, you should be loyal to your origins,” she says. “After I moved to London, years later, they got used to it and now understand that it’s possible to be loyal to your origins even if you’re in another place.”

But today, at least, honoring the tastes of her childhood is effortless, innate. She adds some powdered piment d’Espelette to a pan of red and green peppers, onions, and tomatoes, which will cook down all afternoon into the Basque country signature dish known as pipérade until the flavors meld and each spoonful becomes sweet and tender. Sometimes it is served with eggs. Tonight it will be a bed for thick slabs of tuna belly. Paying more attention to her girls, flitting in and out, than to the large knife in her hand, she perfectly hulls tiny fraises des bois, wild strawberries that will be tossed with fromage blanc and crumbled meringues for a slightly more refined version of a childhood treat: She used to tromp through the forest with her grandfather gathering the berries, which they’d eat with cottage cheese.

By the time dusk settles, Marc has set up the table outside, decorated with the wild flowers the girls had gathered earlier, and friends and family settle down to the potluck. They select a few mussels from the platter of Claude’s moules vinaigrette, each plump, rich bite cut perfectly with the vinaigrette’s acidity, then move on to slices of marbled cured Noir de Bigorre, made from black pigs raised in the region and so fatty it’s slick and shiny and almost spreadable. More wine is poured as the focus shifts to the squid Francis cleaned, which has been kissed with grill marks and tossed with cubes of chorizo; to the pipérade now topped with tuna; and to a local yellow chicken served en crapaudine, or “in the style of a toad,” split down the back, flattened, and garnished with slices of lemon and a scattering of herbs.

Hélène spoons a stuffed tomato onto Claude’s plate and is handing it over when he says, sternly, “Attend, attend! Le jus est plus importante!” He’s right. His niece placates him with a spoonful composed largely of rendered foie gras and duck fat before returning the offending tomato.

A full moon has risen above the farmhouse by the time a bottle of the family’s 1976 armagnac, a pack of cigarettes, and a tourtière landaise, warm from the oven, hit the table. The tart is a true celebration of the region’s bounty, stuffed with armagnac-spiked apple compote and sheathed in crisp phyllo dough brushed with—what else?—duck fat. Baptiste, Marc’s 12-year-old, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand after inhaling a slice and says, to no one in particular, “Un peu sec, non?” A little dry. He may have a Darth Vader mask hanging in his room and an oversize teddy bear guarding the bed, but their days appear numbered. It is clear that the fifth generation of Darroze chefs is awaiting its turn.

“Baptiste told me, ‘I want to be a chef, but not like you,’” says Hélène, laughing. “‘You never cook! You just stand there and delegate.’ It’s true, I delegate. But I create. I cannot delegate creativity.”

Quiterie assumes her usual position on her mother’s lap, Francis swirls and sniffs his armagnac glass and lets out a contented sigh, and Baptiste scoops up the cat, who tolerantly submits to being carried around, zombie-like, paws straight out in front.

After a particularly long toke on his cigarette, Marc exhales, smoke curling up into the air, then turns to his sister.

“Three generations all gathered around a table… La vie est simple, non?“

Basque Seafood Stew

Get the recipe for Tomatoes Stuffed with Foie Gras, Duck Confit, and Chanterelles (Tomates Farcies) »
Get the recipe for Mussels with Herbed Vinaigrette (Moules Vinaigrette) »
Get the recipe for Basque Pipérade with Seared Tuna Steaks »
Get the recipe for Basque Seafood Stew (“Bouillabasque”) »
Get the recipe for Apple and Armagnac Phyllo Pie (Tourtière Landaise) »

The Darroze Family’s Armagnacs

It is said the French brandy known as armagnac is the oldest distilled spirit in all of France—perhaps the world. Though Darroze Armagnac was founded only in 1974, the small, family-run brand is now considered a national treasure. In the 1970s and ’80s, revered Landaise chef and company founder Francis Darroze, Marc and Hélène’s father, traveled the Bas-Armagnac region, which has consistently produced the most complex brandies in France. He visited small, relatively unknown estates, buying a cask here, a bottle there, and curated a cellar that now holds 70 vintages, some dating back to 1904.

Made from grapes grown in one of three regions—Bas-Armagnac, Haut-Armagnac and Ténarèze—all armagnacs start as white wine before going through a single distillation process to produce an aromatic, bold final product. Traditionally, armagnacs are made from a blend of vintages and estates, which, along with the occasional addition of water, allows the producer to refine each batch and smooth out the final taste. Darroze Armagnac, conversely, made its name by taking a different tack: For the majority of the production, neither estates nor vintages are blended, and no water is added. The result is an armagnac that tastes particularly distinct. You’ll find the name of the estate, the year of the bottling, and the year of harvesting on most Darroze labels.

In 1996, Marc took over the family business from Francis.

“My father used to tell me if I didn’t do well at school, I’d have to go into the kitchen,” Marc says, only half joking. He studied winemaking all over the world, and he and his small team produce 100,000 bottles each year.

Here are three representative Darroze Armagnacs, all available at klwines.com.

Les Grands Assemblages, 12 Ans ($70)
This blended armagnac spends 12 years in contact with oak, resulting in a spicy final product with undertones of licorice and cinnamon. Let the spirit breathe for a few minutes, then use as a base for cocktails or enjoy on the rocks.

Domaine de la Poste, 1980 ($180)
Swirl this golden vintage in your glass and you’ll be hit with the smells of the Bas-Armagnac region: almonds and hazelnuts, vanilla and cloves, and a hint of violet. Serve with cheese or tarte Tatin.

Domaine de Martin, 1995 ($130)
This vintage is still relatively young, so the finish is spicy and bright, though you’ll still get a hit of baking spices and gingerbread on the tongue. A glass goes perfectly with chocolate or an after-dinner cigar.

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Hubert Bigallet chewed the gnarled white root of a wild gentian plant. In summer, the Alpine flower blooms in shades of deep violet or brilliant yellow. By autumn, it’s brown and spiky. Gentian, a high-altitude plant, is prized for the complexity of its bitter flavor.

There’s a long history in the Chartreuse mountains, where we are, and across the border in Italy, of distilling aperitifs and digestifs from medicinal mountain shrubs and roots. Gentian is the chief bittering agent for a wide swath of liquors: Campari and Cynar, and most amari made on the Italian side of the Alps, and French aperitifs, including Salers, Suze, and Amer Picon.

While northern Italian aperitif spritzes, laced with amaro, and various punishingly herbaceous digestifs get global attention these days, French versions are still somewhat obscure. France was once home to plenty more small distilleries, many crowded around the mountains and their potent plants, but their numbers have dwindled over the years, and some of these bottles are rarely drunk, or even known, outside the regions where they are made.

“They’re bitter but pleasant,” Hubert declared about his company’s liquors. “It’s a softer bitterness, almost fruity.”

Hubert’s grandfather Félix Bigallet founded the family-run distillery in 1872. Today Bigallet produces a wide range of both syrups and liqueurs, including a thyme digestif, a Chartreuse-like elixir made with dozens of botanicals, and a gentian-scented liqueur called, somewhat mysteriously, China-China amer.

Amer (literally: “bitter”) is the French equivalent of Italian amaro. If you’ve ever had a Fernet-style amaro, China-China (pronounced SHEEna-SHEEna) seems surprisingly tame. It doesn’t have the punch-to-the-throat bitterness that some of the Italian amari have; it’s considered doux-amer, bittersweet. Made with sweet and bitter orange, clove, caramel, anise, and gentian, it’s both citrusy and earthy, herbaceous and a touch sweet. It is so delicious it seems silly that it’s little known outside Rhône-Alpes.

Before our walk up into the Chartreuse mountains, I had lunch with the Bigallet communications manager, Isabelle Perrin, at the charmingly fusty Hôtel des Bains, in the town of Charavines. Over frogs’ legs, a gratin of ravioli pocketed with cooked cream, and a lovely flan made with China-China amer, she recounted the mythology of the drink.

“A pharmacist friend of Félix Bigallet was experimenting with a gentian-orange liquor,” she told me. “One day, he went to go flirt with a worker named China, leaving his concoction as it was heating up. Smelling something burning, he realized it was his liquor and yelled ‘Oh, China China!’ He was sure it was ruined. But the sugars had caramelized with the orange—and it turned out to be delicious. We don’t know if it is true, but that is the legend.”

“Is China a common French name?” I asked.

“Ah, no,” said Isabelle, laughing and shaking her head.

As a child, Hubert helped clean gentian root with a brush and some water, cutting out brown spots with the tip of a knife, as you would a potato. He trained the current distiller, Olivier Giffard, husband of Hubert’s niece, Marie. The Bigallet production facilities feel more like Willy Wonka’s factory than a prototypical cold, damp, and somewhat depressing distillery. The workers there are dressed in blue pants and purple sweatshirts. And the plant even smells like candy. In the back, hydraulic pumps wheeze and click, capping bottles of syrups. A large vintage poster for Amer Citronné dominates one hallway. The image shows a woman dressed in a pale yellow dress, its fabric forming the shape of overlapping lemons. The product has long been out of existence, but Olivier has been experimenting with a new version in his lab. He shows me a recipe for the original from an old, yellowing book with graceful looping handwriting in ink. He promises to share a sample of the work in progress.

That evening, I joined Olivier and Marie for dinner at their home, along with two of their children, and Marie’s parents, Emmanuel and Arlette. Emmanuel, a rotund man with a gray mustache and wide smile, bounded inside, wielding a wooden mallet for smashing ice to chill the champagne and doling out kisses to his grandchildren, Lea and Piettrick. While we sipped champagne around a blazing fire, I asked Marie how she and Olivier met. They both belonged to a mountain club at their university in Lyon, she told me, and for their first date, Olivier invited her to go climbing in the dead of December.

“He invited me to test me,” said Marie. “In the mountain, you cannot hide your true self. I was so cold but so happy.”

After a simple dinner of velvety pumpkin soup, fat sausages with fennel, and tender scalloped potatoes, Olivier poured a round of the resurrected Amer Citronné into small cordial glasses.

We sniffed: fragrant lemon peel, the earthiness of a freshly cut root.

“Long live the house of Bigallet,” bellowed Emmanuel as we tasted it.

Here was a drink that shared some common DNA with limoncello—but with none of the Italian liqueur’s syrupy sweetness. This was bright, fresh, and lively, thanks to the presence of the crisp, bitter gentian root. A drink with a past—and maybe a future.

Get the recipe for the China Fight cocktail »

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I used to love climbing the single crabapple tree across the street from my childhood home. Its pretty pink blossoms would erupt into perfume each summertime. By autumn, when the waxy, golden-green fruits would appear on its branches, I’d be in an almost delirious state of overexcitement, wild for these wild fruits. Then I’d taste them and they were…awful. Excruciatingly sour and bitter, mealier than uncooked potatoes. Certain that there must be a secret to figuring out how to enjoy them, I tried everything: waiting for them to mature on the branches; picking from the tree’s upper reaches; eating fallen fruit; trying to ripen them on the my bedside table. Nothing helped. They never mellowed.

Cut to an apple orchard in Normandy, many years later, beneath a tree covered in fruit just like the crab-apples of my youth. I pick one off the branch and take a bite; it’s like sinking my teeth into a raw turnip. The flavor is intensely astringent. It’s juiceless and tannic, almost pointillist, as individual flecks of pastel dust explode all over my taste buds. “Oui, a classic cider apple,” Julien Frémont exclaims, smiling as I grimace my way through it.

Frémont, whose apples these are, is a young, soft-spoken cider maker whose family has been tending these trees in the Pays d’Auge since 1759. I’ve come here in search of resolution, to redeem that crabapple tree—to finally understand its true purpose. “To make the best hard cider,” Frémont continues, “you need these bitter, tannic cider apples—apples that aren’t pour croquer.” Not for munching. “Every apple has its purpose: Some are for snacking on, others are for cooking, others for distilling.”

The gnarled trees all around us are glowing with red and golden and green and orange and purple and nut-brown russet fruit. As we amble through the orchard, Frémont hands me a Transparente de Croncels—an heirloom varietal he considers perfect for eating out of hand. Its exterior is pale yellow, almost white hued, with a dreamy crimson blush on its sun-kissed side. The apple is soft skinned and mildly granular, its mellow, vinous sweetness shot through with hints of nutmeg, cloves, and myrrh. It tastes the way I imagine apples might have tasted in the three wise men’s days. “It’s a variété à couteau,” Frémont explains: an apple you eat with a knife, for dessert, on its own.

As good as that apple is, it’s those bitter cider apples that Frémont is really after. “These are the ones,” he continues, picking up a few other knobby orbs, “that taste incredible when you transform them into juice and spirits.” He leads me into his ramshackle old barn to show me what he’s talking about. The half-timbered press house is about as rickety and cobwebbed as a structure can possibly be and still stand. Generation after generation of Frémonts have stored, juiced, and distilled their harvest right here.

As soon as I take my first sip of his Cidre Brut par Nature I realize that I’ve waited my whole life to find out what that crabapple from my childhood is really supposed to taste like. It’s as good to the grown-up me as I wished those crabapples had been as a kid, with the complexity and elegance of a grower champagne, but with a rustic, cloudy undertow. Imagine a cult pét-nat crossed with a Belgian gueuze or any other on-trend sour beer, yet with a distinct, low-alcohol personality all its own. I also notice something else: His cider tastes emphatically like cheese—like one of those runny, mold-encrusted treasures of Gallic civilization, only in drinkable form.

When I ask Frémont whether that’s possible, he nods. “You aren’t the first person to make that comparison,” he says. “After all, this vegetal quality—which comes from the grass that feeds the cows that make the milk that turns into cheese—is also present in the apples. These trees grow in the same earth. The trees and the cows need each other, in a symbiotic way. They eat the weeds and fertilize the land—all naturally. And the native yeasts in the air must affect the cheese and ciders in similar ways as well.”

Frémont actually lives in the bucolic, meadow-filled heart of the Livarot, source of that namesake washed-rind, fiber-bound, raw-milk masterpiece. The designated production areas for Camembert, Pont-l’Évêque, Neufchâtel, and Pavé d’Auge are all near here as well. Frémont leads me back outside, pointing out the herd of lyre-horned Salers cows. They’re munching away contentedly on grass and fallen apples, as they’ve always done. I’m a couple of hours west of Paris, though it feels like I’ve traveled back through time, not just to my crabapple tree of youth, but also into a real-life version of an old Impressionist painting.

It makes sense in a way: Normandy is the birthplace of 19th-century Impressionism. And places like Frémont’s farm are still as old-fashioned and picturesque as they were in Renoir’s days. This particular area is called Calvados, which is also the name of the brandy made from the region’s famous apples. Even in France, industrialization has radically altered the way most agricultural goods are made, but some holdouts—like Frémont—still do things the way locals have always done them. By hand, traditionally, à l’ancienne.

To properly understand how his ciders are meant to be drunk, Frémont suggests pairing them with local cheeses. Not just any cheese will do, he cautions. Hundreds of millions of tons of cheese pour out of this region annually, but only a handful of producers still use milk from their very own cows. As we say good-bye to each other, Frémont meticulously writes down the names of some producers whose cheeses I should seek out in the region: Durand for Camembert; Spruytte for Pont-l’Évêque; and his neighbors, the Fromagerie de la Houssaye, for Livarot.

He steers me toward the nearby town of Vimoutiers, a drowsy, pretty village that qualifies as an urban center in these rural parts. I stock up on Frémont’s suggestions at a small cheesemonger’s shop and then pop into Au Chant du Pain bakery on rue du Docteur Dentu. The hearth here seems to have been around since the Middle Ages, and they sell slices of their immense yard-long loaves of walnut bread and chestnut-flour bread by weight.

These almost prehistorically flavorful and nut-packed breads turn out to be the ideal accompaniment to the cheeses and Frémont’s cider I learn while enjoying an impromptu picnic overlooking the trickling Vie River, feeling very much like someone who’s fallen into an Impressionist painting.

Driving north through Normandy’s green and gold landscapes, I end up on the coast in the town of Honfleur, with its heart-stoppingly beautiful port. Old schooners are still docked here, and you can stop in for a glass of cider at many of the establishments lining the harbor. The main attraction here is the vibe: Honfleur and its outlying region was the primary setting for paintings by the likes of Monet, Courbet, Boudin, and many others. Those Impressionist masters didn’t come to Honfleur randomly; they came for the light. It coats falling leaves in its golden-orange aura. When rain gusts in off the ocean, dimming rays make the raindrops glint in a brilliant, silvery way. And when the dampened sun bursts back, everything becomes almost blindingly bright and vibrant.

It’s hard to look at the ocean around Honfleur and not want to be a painter. The clouds and waves resemble swirling brushstrokes, all blues and whites and pearlescent pinks. It’s almost too much. Even the sound of the wind blowing softly through the trees is vividly heightened. Walking through the town before dinner, I wonder whether it’s possible that Impressionism is more than merely a visual experience. Night-blooming flowers cast their fragrant spell over the evening air. A black cat appears like a figure out of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting and disappears into a hole in the wall. Orchards abound, and the boughs of fruit in the gloaming seem to be radiating vitality. Is Impressionism about succumbing to these sensations, dissolving into the mists of sensation?

That evening, I have dinner overlooking the apple trees at La Ferme Saint Siméon, a magnificent old inn that preserves Normandy’s artistic past (the Impressionists stayed and painted there). In between courses, the sommelier suggests I partake in the local custom of a mid-meal glass of calvados, the esteemed local apple brandy. They call it a trou normand (Norman hole), as in the hole in your stomach that calvados purportedly creates that stimulates the appetite and allows you to keep forging your way through course after course of classic Norman cuisine. A newcomer soon detects a pattern in the sorts of dishes eaten in this part of France: mussels with apples, tripe with apples, partridge with apples, steak with apples, and so on. Everything is washed down with jugs of fresh cider. For dessert, they serve you bourdelots, whole apples baked in a pastry crust. This may be followed up by a sweet apple omelet. And then comes the requisite platter of local cheeses, each one more demoralizingly delicious than the last. Whether or not that calvados is actually creating any more space inside a person’s digestive system is moot. You don’t need to believe; you just do it. And eating food this heavy requires drinking something as pleasantly potent as calvados.

There are apparently 800 different varieties of apples grown in Normandy today, and if you weren’t so busy marveling at the hillside castles overlooking the vast blue sea, you’d probably be able to identify many of them on the old coastal road, going southwest from Honfleur to Trouville-sur-Mer. The view is glorious, all fruit-dappled orchards and meadows and wild apple trees. As glimpses of the ocean stretching out toward the horizon flash by through the passenger-side window, you can imagine Courbet setting up his easel out there to paint the spray and the waves and the rocks. When a brief storm comes in, my car is enveloped in billowing sails of fog; it’s like driving through a living canvas.

That afternoon, I meet up with Jean-François Guillouet-Huard, a seventh-generation calvados maker, at Domaine Michel Huard. He recently took over the business from his grandfather, Michel Huard. Like Frémont, Guillouet-Huard too has Salers cows in his orchards. “It’s essential to have the cows tending the land if you want to make good calvados,” he explains. “It’s always been this way. It’s all interconnected.” His operation seems to me to be the platonic ideal of a farm: a preternaturally quiet and peaceful medley of animals, fruit trees, and rolling hills. “It’s beautiful to see the cows in the orchard at sunrise,” he murmurs. “I love walking through the dewy grass at dawn. That’s what I’ve always done. It still makes me happy.”

We head into his barrel rooms to try some back vintages of calvados, which taste like fine cognac, only made out of apples, not grapes. The younger vintages are quite bracing and raw—like drinking flames. As they age, their bite mellows, taking on cardamom overtones and earthy cave notes, as well as elusive herbal flavors. “To understand calvados, you have to spend a lot of time smelling it,” Guillouet-Huard explains. “It isn’t easy to fully comprehend it. But it’s that complexity that is at the heart of calvados. That’s why it’s good after dinner. You have to be in a state of calm.”

He cracks open a bottle of 1976—which happens to be both Guillouet-Huard’s and my birth year. It’s like staring into the soul of 100,000 apples. Its florality floors me; it’s more like perfume than any drink I’ve known. In fact, the aroma reminds me of the blossoms on that tree across the street when I was a kid. Although it’s nearly 40 years old, Guillouet-Huard thinks the calvados might still be too young. (I, of course, agree with this assessment, not caring whether he and I may be biased by the fact that we’re the same vintage as that too-young calvados.) “It’s not in the culture of our domaine to rush things,” he adds. “We believe that you have to be patient to make proper calvados. But we are out of step with this consumerist society where everything has to go really quickly.”

The best parts of Normandy are all out of step with the modern world. What else would you expect from a place where the cows that mow the lawn beneath the apple trees give milk that makes cheeses that taste ever-so-slightly like apples? You don’t need to go down some magical rabbit hole of a trou normand to feel close to the cycles of nature here. This place is a simple place, a region intimately connected to the past. It’s an Impressionist garden of earthly delights, and I hope to return again and again.

But for now, it’s my final dinner in Normandy, and I’m meeting with the cider maker Eric Bordelet, formerly the sommelier at the Michelin-starred L’Arpège in Paris, a restaurant famous for using the finest, freshest vegetables possible, many of them grown on its own farms. When he worked there, he felt that certain dishes were better served by cider than by wine. When he couldn’t find ciders made in the elegant farmhouse style he loved, he returned to the familial domaine, which had fallen into disrepair, and began making ciders his way. “I don’t want to replace wine, I want to complement it,” he tells me, as we sit down to the table at Le Manoir du Lys, located inside a nature preserve in the Andaine Forest. “A good sommelier is someone who knows how to link food and wine, and cider is excellent at the dinner table—especially when you have it with the right dish.”

To illustrate, he pours us each a glass of his “sydre,” a spelling borrowed from Old French, to go with a plate of just-picked, raw cèpes (porcini mushrooms) served with tomatoes from L’Arpège’s farm and fleur de sel. The dish is sensational—but it is even better with a glass of Bordelet’s cider, which tastes like apple pie topped with buttered popcorn and caramel sauce. It is outlandishly good—less funky than Frémont’s, but deeply flavorful and satisfying. “When I think of cider, I think of our terroir,” Bordelet says. “Our trees, our land. Cider is our wine: It’s our culture, it’s our history.”

I tell him about the bitter, sour, small crabapples from my childhood. “Those sauvage apples are simply more expressive than domesticated apples,” he answers, pouring us another glass. “And they make wonderful cider, don’t they?”

Get the recipe for Honey-Glazed Roast Pork with Apples »

Get the recipe for Apple, Celeriac, and Carrot Salad »

Get the recipe for Caramelized Apple Omelet (Omelette Sucrée à la Normande) »

Get the recipe for Baked Apple Terrine with Calvados »

Normandy’s Best Cider & Calvados Producers

Eric Bordelet Bordelet makes crisp, pure, and perfectionist Normandy ciders (whether spelled “sidre” or “sydre,” as per ancient local tradition) as delicious—and well-priced—as any you will ever try. beauneimports.com

Julien Frémont Whether it’s Frémont’s all-natural apple juice, his highly funky sparkling Cidre Brut par Nature, or his exceptional calvados, everything he makes with apples turns into drinkable gold. louisdressner.com

Huard Huard’s vintage ciders and his entry-level Calvados Hors-d’Age are ideal introductions to Normandy’s apple spirit. charlesnealselections.com

Lemorton The Lemorton family makes some of the finest calvados from the Domfrontais region. The appellation requires 30% of the cider to be made from pears. A number of its vintages from the 1980s—mellow, profound, rich—are available in stores. charlesnealselections.com

Cyril Zangs Zangs Brut Cider is the sort of super-natural, ultra-chic hipster cider favored by the likes of Le Chateaubriand in Paris and Wildair on the Lower East Side of New York City. selectionmassale.com

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