Brandy

Distillation

Since the dawn of time, man has always sought to extract the quintessential aromas from fruit. This permanent quest, likened to extract the quintessential aromas from fruit. This permanent quest, likened to a real alchemy, is still very mysterious today!

From the careful picking of ripe fruit to its processing and tasting, fruit is a veritable anthology of tastes and colours, textured and charaters... It can be eaten raw and cooked, fermented, pressed or cooked, but it is distillation that best reveals its innermost secrets. 

The art of distillation goes back to ancient Greece, where it was also practised to obtain perfumes, philtres and ointments. 

With its strong traditions, Alsace has become the privileged host of this art, due to the great variety of fruits, wild or cultivated, offered by its regions and its inhabitants. 

In earlier times Alsatian-Moselle Local Law, had specific measures to regulate the activities of the distillers, which contributed to the local development of these pratices. It must be said that the most appreciated provision was the exmption from duties and taxes on the first 10 litres of pure alcohol produced!

The art of distillation in Alsace has a strong cultural identity, bearing the oldest agricultural and viticultural traditions. 

Our estate, whose creation dates back to 1616, had always demonstrated the same passion and precious know-how acquired over the generations, both in the production of its wines and its eaux-de-vie and liqueurs. 

Taking advantage of the existence of our family orchards, all located on limestone soils, the meticulous production of our eaux-de-vie has always been a high point in the life of the Domain. The excellent complementarity between the different activities: vineyard management, wine making, orchard monitoring, harvesting, distillation, etc., in the annual tasks, allows us to optimise the search of quality in order to offer a varied range of excellent products, representative of our terrois and plant varieties. But nothing can be done without rigorous pratices that leave nothing to chance! 

Did you konw that our internal charter requires permanent maintenance of the orchards, a natural fight against parasites and insects, manual harvesting at the right time of ripeness, rigorous sorting of the fruit harvest to eliminate damaged fruit and leaves, slow fermentation followed daily, distillation in two or three passes, precise adjustment of the degree of alcohol with mountain spring water, etc? 

For the grape marc (what remains in the press after the end of the pressing cycle,i.e. the skin, the seeds ans a little pulp from the berries), the same applies, as only the last harvests are used to make these very original eaux-de-vie! As the grapes are harvested whole, they are also harvested at the right maturity, with a qualitative sorting, a pressing in closed cage presses after a delicate destemming to remove the stalks, without crushing, to obtain high quality juices. 

A beautiful grape marc, Gewurztraminer, Muscat or Pinot Noir, is only made with patince and passion! The marcs which still contain juice, often the most gragant, are packed in airtight bins until the date of distillation in January, taking advantage of a slack period in the work of the vineyard. 

Our list of orchard fruit eaux-de-vie: mirabelle: plum, quetsche: pear, kirsch, quince, rasberry, blackberry, alisier, etc., as well as grape marc and liqueurs, is a true ode to nature.