Mar 12 2010
Eau De Vie – “water of life” and then some!
Literally translated, Eau de vie is French for “water of life”. In practical terms it’s the name for a clear alcohol distilled in pretty much the same way as brandy. A sniff of the stuff would certainly wake you up but a few glasses and you aren’t going to be very lively the next morning!
Outside of France you usually see it as Poire Williams (or Pear williams) and it’s often seen with a pear inside the bottle. Inside France it’s not just a Loire valley speciality but locally there’s a quite fascinating way of making your own. I’m sure areas other than the Indre have similar traditions but this is the way I know.
Un Alambic - portable still for eau de vie
Eau de vie can be made with pear but around here is more usually made with cherries, plums or peaches. I have heard of it being made with apples but usually apples are used for Calvados. The best (in our opinion) is made with a small yellow plum called a Mirabelle.
Making eau de vie starts with fallen fruit. Commercially it’s probably made with fruit picked off the tree but the rural French are very good at making use of stuff that would otherwise go to waste so all the fruit that falls to the ground is collected and put in a big bucket.
Almost any clean container can be used. We have two Mirabelle trees which were very productive last year so we have a 120 litre plastic barrel (roughly 30 gallons) that we borrowed from the neighbours.
Into the barrel goes all the fruit. A few bits of twig, grass, and the occasional wasp, hornet or bug also go in but nothing is going to survive this process so nobody makes a fuss! For 100 litres of fruit you add ten kilos of sugar. I have to be honest, once again our neighbour was the expert assistant here.
The fruit, although in various states of damage, needs to be properly broken down so that the sugar can start working on it. You can try a big stick but the mixture is very, very thick. The only sensible course of action is to roll your sleeve up and stick your arm in. Lovely!
Then it gets more or less left to its own devices. Every day or so for the first couple of weeks we needed to loosen the sealed lid because a surprising amount of pressure builds up as it starts to ferment. Apart from that you leave it alone…
…until now, the start of March, when the man arrives with his “Alambic”.
Un Alambic is a portable still. At the end of February or beginning of March it shows up in a village about 5 kilometres away called Dun Le Poëlier.
Portable still from the back
It’s an absolutely fascinating thing to see. Stuck on the back of a big trailer it is a magical contraption of steel, wood and copper with pipes going everywhere and steam hissing from here and there. I don’t really know how it works but the mashed fruit and sugar mix goes in one end and out of the other end, about an hour later, comes potent clear alcohol!
As it first appears, a few drops at a time, it is above 80 proof and warm. It is very, very strong – tasting it is an interesting experience but it’s above the legal limit and actually too strong to be very tasty. The man turns a tap and brings it down to a reasonable 50-ish proof. Now it’s delicious.
At the moment it’s about 3.50 Euros a litre, including duty. That’s about a quarter of what you pay in the shops. Sadly we don’t know how much longer this splendid tradition will continue. The French government, in its wisdom (?) has changed the law. Historically the license for making eau de vie could be passed from father to son but not any more.
Fortunately our local distiller is still a relatively young man so we hope he has many more years in him yet!
.
