Cider

Normandy may be famous for cider, but you will not find it prominent on restaurant wine lists since it is not the best companion for fine cookery. Nor is it as subtle an ingredient as wine. Cider’s place is the crêperie where it is served in mugs or bowls (une bolée de cidre is what you order), or the farmhouse where it comes as an hospitable drink made with the apples from the orchard surrounding the house, or at table with charcuterie and dishes that have been cooked with cider rather than with wine. Good cidre bouché - not the sweet, fizzy stuff in screw-top bottles — is fine with black pudding, apple and potatoes, or with the big cubes of roast belly of pork known as rillons, or with strong cheeses of the Livarot kind, made by long tradition in the Pays d’Auge where the best Calvados and some of the best cider comes from.