Like Champagne and Cognac, Calvados is both a drink\u2014in this case, apple brandy\u2014and a place. The d\u00e9partement, one of the five that\u00a0make up Normandy<\/a>, covers 2,100 square miles, with a majestic Atlantic coastline unspooling from the Seine estuary to the World War II battlefield of Omaha Beach. Lush cow pasture (cheese is another of the area\u2019s culinary calling cards) and tidy orchards cover the interior.<\/p>\n Alex Cr\u00e9tey Systermans<\/p>\n A classic half-timbered building on the grounds of Calvados Christian Drouin, in Pont-l\u2019\u00c9v\u00eaque. Alex Cr\u00e9tey Systermans<\/p>\n From left: Paul Lacheray, chef of the Honfleur restaurant Hu\u00eetre Br\u00fbl\u00e9e; oysters at Hu\u00eetre Br\u00fbl\u00e9e.<\/p>\n Since the 1960s, the Drouin family has been distilling the fruits of the land in the heart of the Pays d\u2019Auge, the most exacting of the three appellations in which Calvados can be produced. But when Guillaume Drouin joined the family business in 2004, it was the drink\u2019s reputation that needed refreshing. \u201cIt\u00a0had a dusty image,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt was the bottle of your grandfather.\u201d<\/p>\n Drouin\u2019s own grandfather, Christian, started as a hobby distiller. By the 1980s, when Drouin\u2019s father, Christian Jr., began bottling, \u201cCalvados was still very regional,\u201d he said. \u201cMost of it would end up in a cup of coffee.\u201d Drouin joined the business with a mandate to update the spirit\u2019s public perception while protecting the family legacy. \u201cThat makes our work interesting. How do you innovate in a very traditional industry?\u201d<\/p>\n Alex Cr\u00e9tey Systermans<\/p>\n Octopus with asparagus and yogurt at Aux Saint Jus, in St.-Julien-le-Faucon. Alex Cr\u00e9tey Systermans<\/p>\n From left: A street scene in Pont-l\u2019\u00c9v\u00eaque; sole with artichokes and olives at Ferme Saint Sim\u00e9on, an inn in Honfleur.<\/p>\n Tradition begins with the apples, 35\u00a0heirloom varieties selected over the centuries for natural pest resistance: blush-cheeked Bedans, squat chartreuse Domaines, pink Noel Deschamps stippled with goose bumps.<\/p>\n On my October visit to the distillery\u2014located 10\u00a0minutes inland from the toylike Trouville-Deauville station, a two-hour train ride from Paris\u2014the harvest was just getting under way. At the Drouin complex, fruit covered the trees and littered the grounds. After tasting some seductive old-barrel brandies, I got swept up, unexpectedly, in an exquisite gin made from the same apples and layered with raspberries and lemon.<\/p>\n Alex Cr\u00e9tey Systermans<\/p>\n A view of the Seine from a suite at Ferme Saint Sim\u00e9on.<\/p>\n Tradition and history have been the main currency in Normandy for generations. You can\u2019t go there and not do the World War II circuit. Thanks to Scottish-born historian Iain Hennelly, owner of Normandy on Tour,<\/a> I spent a whirlwind afternoon that began at the Mus\u00e9e du D\u00e9barquement,<\/a> a stark concrete-and-glass box in Arromanches-les-Bains, the village fronting the British Allied landing site of Gold Beach. At Arromanches 360\u00b0 Circular Cinema,<\/a> I took in an emotional short film featuring interviews with D-Day survivors. From there, I walked along Omaha Beach, where on June 6, 1944, German gunners camouflaged on the cliffs killed an estimated 2,000 members of the 1st and 29th infantry divisions on this six-mile shoreline. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the ocean that gave it the nickname Bloody Omaha,\u201d Hennelly said, \u201cbut the sand turning red.\u201d<\/p>\n Alex Cr\u00e9tey Systermans<\/p>\n Commemorating D-Day on the beach in Arromanches-les-Bains.<\/p>\n As a traveler, you can never escape the gravity of Normandy\u2019s past. But the region does a wonderful job of acknowledging what happened there, while also celebrating what is happening there. Throughout the d\u00e9partements, I found the past and present in an ongoing dialogue. In tony Deauville, I retraced the steps of the\u00a0old Franciscan nuns who used to inhabit the grand convent that\u2019s become Les Franciscaines<\/a> cultural arts\u00a0center. At Restaurant de L\u2019\u00cele Benoist<\/a>, in Courseulles-sur-Mer, I pried chilled periwinkles and whelks from their corkscrew shells in a dining room overlooking the oyster ponds that chef S\u00e9bastien Benoist\u2019s family has farmed since the 1950s.<\/p>\n In Honfleur, a harbor town favored by the Impressionists, I stayed at Ferme Saint Sim\u00e9on<\/a>. The family-owned Relais & Ch\u00e2teaux inn has a gracious lawn overlooking the estuary, bathrooms furnished with steam showers and full-size Molton Browns, and a hygge tavern, Bistro Le Boucane<\/a>. The old loft above the restaurant was the winter address of Claude Monet, who painted four snowscapes of the road outside the erstwhile inn in the late 1860s.<\/p>\n Alex Cr\u00e9tey Systermans<\/p>\n World War II enthusiasts in Canadian uniform outside the Mus\u00e9e du D\u00e9barquement, in Arromanches-les-Bains.<\/p>\n From Saint Sim\u00e9on, I followed the same route Monet would have walked, down into Honfleur, a knot of galleries and candy shops around a picturesque marina where the Seine drains into the Atlantic. Before opening Hu\u00eetre Br\u00fbl\u00e9e<\/a> in 2018, chef Paul Lacheray, who grew up in Honfleur, and his wife, Chloe Woestelandt, would go to Paris to eat in ingredient-conscious, natural-wine-pouring bistros and lament that they couldn\u2019t find something similar back home. They wondered, Could we do this in touristy Honfleur? \u201cIn the beginning,\u201d Lacheray said, \u201ceveryone told us, \u2018You\u2019re crazy, don\u2019t do\u00a0that.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Alex Cr\u00e9tey Systermans<\/p>\n A corner of the dining room at Ferme Saint Sim\u00e9on.<\/p>\n The couple didn\u2019t listen. They now tend a charming bolt-hole with bouquets of dried eucalyptus and ivory roses hanging from the stone walls. Just inside the front door, I passed Lacheray hovering over veal kidneys and\u00a0scallop crudo in the glowing open kitchen. I got the oysters, of course, but I still think about my order of Venus clams, steamed in warm cream with citrusy-floral makrut\u00a0lime.<\/p>\n Alex Cr\u00e9tey Systermans<\/p>\n The main street of the village of Beaumont-en-Auge.<\/p>\n The next day, I asked Lacheray for his favorite spots in the region, and he sent me an hour south to Aux Saint Jus<\/a>, in St.-Julien-le-Faucon, a no-stoplight town of 745 souls. \u201cNormandy is getting better and better outside the touristic places,\u201d he explained, adding that the less expensive real estate in the countryside allows newcomers to experiment. That tracked with my experience. However much I identified with the bronzed grand-p\u00e8res obstinately soaking up every last ray of autumn sun on the beach, I kept retreating inland.<\/p>\n Alex Cr\u00e9tey Systermans<\/p>\n From left: The entrance to Les Franciscaines, an arts center in Deauville; the building\u2019s library.<\/p>\n Eccentric characters inhabit the rural villages of the Pays d\u2019Auge, where storybook bridges cross rushing streams and the lampposts are swallowed by blue morning glory. In Beaumont-en-Auge, I\u00a0encountered the kaleidoscope craftsman Dominic Stora fussing over fragments of mirrored glass in a white optician\u2019s coat in his shop, Apr\u00e8s la Pluie.<\/a> In\u00a0Pont-l\u2019\u00c9v\u00eaque I met David Raguet, a golf pro who decided to trade tee times for cheese rinds and opened Fromagerie La D\u00e9gusterie<\/a> a few years ago.<\/p>\n At Aux Saint Jus, meanwhile, chef Pablo Jacob and sommelier Guillaume Armand are quietly turning St.-Julien into a culinary destination. Even though, as Jacob told me, the coast still gets the bulk of Normandy\u2019s visitors, \u201cwe usually have to say no to at least ten people every service because we don\u2019t have enough space.\u201d<\/p>\n The sun-washed dining room was white and green as a head of romaine and was stacked with wine for retail sale. A chalkboard name-checked the provenance of the house-butchered animals, and there were enough jars of preserved lemons and cornichons to brighten a year of tagines and charcuterie boards. I got lost in a bowl of split-pea, the homeliest of soups, glowed up with crackles of house-made pancetta, lots of good olive oil, and fresh cilantro and dill. Around me, veterinarians, stonemasons, and remote-working Parisians filed in for the well-priced set lunch.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter COVID, instead of buying a small apartment in Paris, a lot of people bought a house in the country,\u201d Jacob said. (He and his wife were among them.) \u201cThe region used to be considered in an economic decay, but now there\u2019s a new dynamic going on.\u201d<\/p>\n Alex Cr\u00e9tey Systermans<\/p>\n The main building at Ferme Saint Sim\u00e9on, in Honfleur.<\/p>\n I left Aux Saint Jus refreshed\u2014not with apples but with whole-wheat pasta whose spiral curves caught shreds of succulent braised beef; with spiced and roasted pumpkin in a porridge of red lentils; and, most importantly, with that serial traveler\u2019s thrill of discovering gold in the middle of nowhere.<\/p>\n A version of this story first appeared in the September 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline \u201cFruit Forward.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/f197e2d8585e15091c1e713a3f3cf4b5.jpeg\"\/)
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