Michel Beucher Old Calvados (organic)

The collected alcohol is aged in oak barrels that have contained an excellent cider. The quality, the aroma and the ageing combined, make it a noble product.

Under the apple trees, the cows

Every Sunday, around 3 p.m., Michel Beucher enters the Café du Marché on Boulevard Raspail, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, sits down at his favorite table and orders a frites-salade-faux-filet à point, followed by a chocolate mousse. He has finished dismantling his stand at the organic market across the street and his bottles are stored in the van in which he will later return to Le Breil, his farm near Laval, in Mayenne. Michel Beucher is a producer of apple and pear juice, cider and calvados, all organic.

He started in 1976 with 17 hectares of mixed farming - "Everyone laughed. They were convinced that I was going to fail" - but with the success of his yoghurts and the difficulty of finding land, his farm quickly became too small to meet the demand. He preferred to change his business. "I untied the cows and we went into cider on 1.5 ha of old apple trees. "In 1995 , the consolidation of agricultural land promoted by the government allowed him to obtain a large plot of land in one piece. So he started planting. "We plowed everything, broke everything up. It was quite a job. "Today, on 24 hectares, 700 apple trees and 300 pear trees grow in staggered rows 11 meters apart. "You have to see it, it's magnificent. "

High stems and real trunks

Michel Beucher's orchards are home only to "high stems", trees with real trunks, which climb up to ten meters, with airy branches and which take their ease without jostling the neighbor. Not to be confused with the "low stems", these apple trees planted one on top of the other, in tight rows, not exceeding two meters in height to be picked by hand or mechanically. The low stems obey the rules of intensive agriculture and "produce after four years with chemical products". The high stems only produce after twenty years. "I've only been in full production for four or five years, averaging 90 tons per year. This is the result of a lifetime of construction. Of work well done. "

He has never used phytosanitary products, organic or not. "Zero treatment, zero input, zero fertilizer, no plowing or weeding and healthy apples, no disease. The professionals do not understand that we have such beautiful and clean fruit. "

His secret is quite obvious: "In the past, in Normandy, you had cows under the apple trees, no treatments and beautiful fruit. "So Michel Beucher did the same, because "a cider orchard without animals does not exist" . He has kept about 40 cows that give him calves and that, the rest of the time, graze and maintain the orchards. "Thanks to the animals, there is no need for treatments or fertilizers. It's biodiversity. Those who have problems with butterflies and fungus, it is because they do not use the land properly. "And those who, not long ago, were still sniggering about organic farming have had it. He has never used the Bordeaux mixture (copper-based) so popular with his organic colleagues to fight scab or powdery mildew. "I have had the occasional caterpillar in a tree or two. They eat part of the leaves, but after a good storm or hail, they fall to the ground. While grazing, the cows crush them with their feet. Even if they don't exterminate everything, there's not enough left to have invasions. "It ' s as simple as that: tall stems in meadows and cows under apple trees. In the fall, he waits for the fruit to fall into the grass, which cushions it, and he goes by every week to pick up his Norman varieties: noël des champs, bedan, bisquet, very good for slightly fleshy ciders; petit jaune or judor for juice. About fifteen in all that will end up in juice, cider or calvados, always medalled in competitions. And guaranteed without pesticides.