Imagine sitting on a terrace 22m above the ground, in a 250-year-old plane tree, watching the windmills turning on the rolling hills of the Pays d'Auge. The Nid d'Aigle (Eagle's Nest) is one of Le Domaine de Canon's three luxury treehouses. The elegant estate (00 33 2 50 67 10 74, coupdecanon@gmail.com; entrance, €2) is also a cider and calvados producer where visitors may take part in honey and apple harvesting, according to season, and an organic discovery farm, where they can pet Hungarian sheep, Normandy cows, woolly pigs (a genial half-pig, half-rug type creature) and llamas. The Domaine is a highlight of the Route du Cidre, for both day visitors and treehouse dwellers.
Lower Normandy's Pays d'Auge is home to the mellow meadows of the well-signposted (with an apple) Route du Cidre, or Cider Route, the only one of its kind in France, where cider and calvados producers in half-timbered manors are happy to show you how the magic is wrought. It's a 40km circular route, along which you'll pass villages where tiny galleries in squat, turreted cottages showcase local artists, and creperies serve cider in teacups; hotels half-hidden in high oak copses beside waving cornfields; and everywhere apple orchards, perfect for picnics and sampling a drop or two of distilled nectar.
An excellent starting point for the route is the pretty village of Cambremer, in the heart of the Pays D'Auge. The terrace of the Café des Sports (rue Pasteur, +2 31 63 03 52) on the Place de l'Eglise is a popular place for a coffee or a glass of cider. Opposite, you'll find the picturesque Restaurant Au P'tit Normand (+2 31 32 03 20) and the tranquil beams of the Grange aux Dîmes gallery, which showcases local artists.
Just around the corner is Calvados Pierre Huet (+2 31 63 01 09; guided tour and generous tasting, €2,50), one of the Pays D'Auge's most celebrated producers of cider, calvados and pommeau (a mix of apple juice and apple brandy), with its beautiful colombage manor house surrounded by orchards, the great distilling barns tucked away behind.
According to our eloquent oenologist guide, François, the origin of the Normandy apple tree is "lost in the night of time". The first mention of its presence appears in the year 862, in books of obscure writings at the Benedictine abbey of Saint Wandrille, some 100km to the north-east. Sailors from the Basque Country are said to have introduced cider, or sagardoa (Basque for apple wine), to Norman mariners as early as the sixth century, and by the 12th century, the Spaniards had exported cider making to Normandy. By the 1600s, cider had supplanted cervoise (an ancient barley beer) as the region's tipple, which it remained until the middle of the last century when beer took over. Today, apple trees are cultivated using traditional methods on flint clay soil and sedimentary rock.
The apples come in four varieties: bitter, sweet bitter, sweet and acidic, with names such as gentle bishop, yellow knight, white calf and skin of dog – for a charm of powerful trouble . . .
After being shown around Calvados Pierre Huet's sorting, steeping and pressing sheds, the long, low cider and pommeau cellars with their whorled oak barrels, and the great stills with their copper streamers and coolers for the concoction of calvados, we repaired to the shop to taste fragrant apple juice, sweet cider with its woody tang, tantalising pommeau that misleads you with its gentle apple-juice entrée before the fiery aftertaste, and various vintages of calvados: the caramel surge of the eight-year-old vieille reserve, the apricot dragon of the 12-year-old hors d'Age (my favourite), and the 30-year-old cordon or, which tasted like a liquid version of a very heavy, alcoholic Christmas cake. If you feel the need to soak all that up, the convivial Madame Therouin of the nearby Hôtel & Bar Restaurant Commerce provides a hearty menu ouvrier (workers' menu) – and a comfortable room to sleep it off.
To the north of Cambremer, at Victot-Pontfol, the Dupont family has been creating cider and calvados for four generations (+2 31 63 24 24, calvados-dupont.com). They number the famous Parisian hotel George V and Tour D'Argent restaurant among their clients, and on warm days, visitors may picnic on their lawns for a €5 fee.
Beuvron-en-Auge, 4km north along the route, is a cutesy village regularly voted one of the most beautiful in France. If you like geraniums, tourist knick-knack shops and antiques, this is the place for you. If not, take the lovely country lanes that lead you around the rest of the Cider Route, north-east to bucolic Beaufour-Druval, with its ancient cemetery, vast, spooky caves, and Lepage cider and calvados producers (M Bernard Lepage, +2 31 65 12 75); then east to the ancient village of Bonnebosqr; south to the dinky hamlet of La Roque-Baignard, over which the young French writer André Gide presided as mayor, in what may be the tiniest mairie (town hall) in all of Normandy, a little pointy-roofed building about the size of a British police box; and lastly to tranquil St-Ouen-le-Pin, with its dappled churchyard where lies the French historian and politician François Guizot. If you visited every cider producer you found around these villages, the route could take you through harvest time and straight on till Christmas, but equally a day or two is plenty for a taste of autumn sunshine in a bottle.
If you'd like a luxury hideaway on the ground rather than in the trees, Château Les Bruyères is a chic yet relaxing hotel in an 18th-century manor house with sumptuous suites, an elegant champagne bar and pretty restaurant, a lovely garden swimming pool in 10 hectares of grounds, and an amazingly pet-friendly attitude: guests' dogs and cats are welcome, as long as they're civil to the resident dogs, cat, donkey, horses and rabbit, and if you turn up with your own horse, it gets free apples and lodging. It's a laidback, generous approach that's typical of this area of Normandy. Perhaps it's something to do with centuries of drinking cider on sunny days.
Getting there
Brittany Ferries sails Portsmouth-Caen and LD Lines sails Portsmouth-Le Havre.
Where to stay
Nid d'Aigle (Eagle's Nest) is one of three treehouses at Le Domaine de Canon, from €180 for two in high season, €100 in low season (Nov to March), incl welcome drink and room-service breakfast; four-course dinner, €25pp, also delivered to the treehouse. Château les Bruyères, Route du Cadran, 14340 Cambremer (+2 31 32 22 45). Twin and doubles from €150 and €190. Restaurant à la carte from €42pp.
Further information
For more information on the cider route, visit cambremer.com/normandy/cambremer_gb.htm (French and English); francethisway.com/normandy/normandyciderroute.php (English); or routeducidre.free.fr/ (French).
