Calvados

Within France, the Normandy region is best known for cheese, crêpes, and apples. The cheese (especially Camembert and Livarot) comes from the seeming billions of cows that speckle the hillsides. Crêpes are a local dish that went national. You can find a crêpe stand on almost any corner in any city in France. And the apples....well, if the land isn't covered by cows it is covered by apple trees.

Many of the apples end up in cider. Not your gallon jug sweet Indiana cider, but rather a fizzy hard cider that is bottled like champagne and treated with the same respect. If the apples are really lucky, they end up as Calvados - the local apple brandy.
Calvados, the apple brandy, takes its name from the Calvados region of lower Normandy. There seem to be hundreds of local producers who sell there products from their houses or roadside stands. Almost like moonshine.

The serious producers turn out a product that is prized as much as fine cognac. They age the calvados in wooden barrels for 10 years or more. In some places, you can buy stuff that is 40 to 50 years old. It is serious business. In France, anything involving food or drink is serious business.