ANTOINE MAROIS

Antoine Marois is from the Pays d'Auge (Normandy), a country of orchards and a beautiful agricultural region. No doubt inspired by his childhood, he became an agronomist in the world of wine and worked in many regions of France and Navarre. His history, his taste and his experience for the terroirs made him return, in 2016, to settle in his native region on the estate of his grandparents, who were selling the apples of the orchard to cider cooperatives at that time.

The only mission he has set himself: to reveal the great cider-producing terroirs of the Pays d'Auge in order to produce exceptional ciders that are representative of a soil, apple varieties, a vintage, a biological work.

Nestled at the top of a hill, the Domaine Antoine Marois (18ha in total including 7.5ha of orchards), overlooks the village of Cambremer. This village wad classified as a "remarkable site of taste", and gave its name to the only Cider Cru officially recognized in France.

Like a winemaker, Antoine Marois works in his orchard to extract the authentic: Local varieties planted in tall stems (also called "open-air orchard"), Add animal compost (cow grazing, except harvest period), Manual harvests by variety, by orchard and at full maturity, Successive sorting, Fermentation in stainless steel tanks with indigenous yeasts, No sulphiting during fermentations, Bottling at the estate, Natural foaming in the bottle (no carbonation), unlike most "conventional" ciders.

If we change the word "apple" and "variety" to "grape" and "varietal", we are there, right? Each cuvée in the range comes from a single orchard where we find a mixture of apples (tart, bittersweet, binet red, etc.) and it becomes a parcel-based cuvée, thus expressing the diversity of its terroir.