Could These Fruit Brandies Lead A Revolution?
What the spirits industry should learn from Laurent Cazottes, his organic farming, and his magical fruit spirits from Southwest France.
Distiller and winemaker Laurent Cazottes pointed to a diagram on the wall of his tasting room that showed the differences between conventional, organic, and biodynamic viticulture and certifications for the latter two practices. “Eighty-five percent of wine in the world is conventional, but 15 percent is here,” Cazottes told me, gesturing to the organic and biodynamic segments of the chart.
“And in spirits, 99.9 percent is made here,” he said, pointing to the conventional segment and the list of deplorable practices it permits: the use of pesticides, insecticides, additives, and so on.
For someone like me who started in wine and came to spirits from the side, I’ve often wondered about this difference. There’s a significant, influential movement in the wine world that recognizes an essential connection between quality produce and quality wine, and that improved agricultural practices result in a better-tasting product. This idea is still quite niche in spirits. While there is a strong trend in the wine industry toward small-scale organic farming, biodynamics, and regenerative practice, agriculture in the spirits industry remains heavily industrial.
I visited Cazottes in February at his distillery in Gaillac, in Southwest France, where he farms 20 hectares of fruit trees, grapes, flowers, plants, and grains that are the raw materials for his range of eaux de vie, liqueurs, and aperitifs. He grows Williams pear, greengage plum, wild quince, Périgord truffle oaks, walnut trees, tomatoes, aromatic herbs, and five hectares of an ancient grain called petit épeautre, or Einkorn wheat. He also has four hectares of indigenous grape varieties like mauzac rose and prunelart.
Cazottes drove us through the village to see his orchards. “My father was a moonshiner,” Cazottes said cheekily, meaning a bouilleur ambulant, or itinerant distiller, a traditional occupation in France. In 1998, when Cazottes was 23 years old, he decided to take over his father’s business. He changed the focus, planted trees and vineyards, and sought to create a brand.
Cazottes’s approach makes him part of the 0.1 percent of spirits producers that reject conventional agriculture’s sacrifice of quality for high yields and low costs. He’s meticulous about using the best produce—organically grown with biodynamic practices—to craft his spirits, most of which are single vintage. This is the reason why Michelin-starred restaurants and top bars in France, the U.S., and around the world clamber for bottles of his small-production eaux de vie and liqueurs. It’s why they pursue collaborations with him, as do cult winemakers like Jacques Lassaigne in Champagne, Yvon and Jules Métras in Beaujolais, and Eric Pfifferling in Tavel.
Cazottes is a rarity as a distiller. There are now some organic vodkas, gins, and maybe a couple dozen tequilas on the market. There are a tiny number of organic Cognac producers. Of course, the overwhelming majority of grain production—which is the base for the majority of spirits production—is not organic, and is often grown far away from where it’s distilled. (Japan, to take an extreme example, imports its barley from Scotland and elsewhere in Europe.) There are only a handful of small, artisanal independent distillers working like Cazottes: farming their own produce, organically, transparently, and sustainably. Within the spirits industry, there are so few that it’s almost statistically insignificant. Two examples of distillers making brandies from organic fruit in a similar vein to Cazottes are Hans Reisetbauer and the Rochelt family, both in Austria.
Cazottes showed me the copper alembic still where he makes his spirits. It was his father’s old still, and he pointed out where the wheels were once attached when it was driven around. He explained the distillation process, how the aromas, flavors, and alcohol concentrate. It’s a relatively simple process, but it’s what goes into the still that makes the end product so remarkable.
“Alembic is not magic. It’s a concentration tool. If you put something very good inside, and you understand what’s happening in your still, you can make something very good,” Cazottes told me. “But if you put bad things in it, you can’t have something good. It’s exactly like wine.”
The production of Cazottes’s famous tomato liqueur is proof of this concept. Years ago, Cazottes started collecting tomato varieties. He now grows 300 cultivars in his home garden, planted amongst sage, savory, and greengage plum trees for biodiversity. They are handpicked from July to September, at peak ripeness, then destemmed and quartered by hand, macerated in Cazottes’s eau de vie (made from local grapes).
The first iteration of this liqueur included 48 varieties of tomato in the liqueur, then 72 varieties; the current total is more than 280. “The diversity gives the aromatic complexity in a different way than the aging that you see everywhere in spirits,” he told me. We talked beneath a poster of hundreds of tomato varieties in his tasting room, and I took a sip of the tomato liqueur he poured. It tasted like summer concentrate: tomato skins still warm from the sun, tapenade, leafy herbs, sultanas, fish sauce. It was fresh, salty, funky, and mind-blowingly detailed.
It’s one of a range of liqueurs and eaux de vie that Cazottes makes from his fruits and plants, like mauzac rose grapes, Williams pear, greengage plum, and sour wild cherries. Each one has so much depth of flavor and complexity from the distillation process that they are almost hyperrealistic—more representative of the fruit than the actual fruit itself.
Cazottes poured a taste of his Genièvre Infusion Naturelle (G.I.N., for short), as well as the spirit he makes from Einkorn wheat. G.I.N. is so-named because it isn’t made by redistilling industrial 96 percent abv alcohol and thus can’t legally be labeled as gin under EU regulations. The Einkorn was originally crafted for Le Bristol in Paris, home of the three-starred Michelin restaurant Épicure. The bar had first asked Cazottes if he could make vodka from the ancient wheat. “I told them no, because vodka is like gin, it’s like pastis. You need to use industrial alcohol, 96 degrees,” Cazottes said. “It’s neutral, and I don’t want neutral alcohol. I want aromatic alcohol.”
Of course, this kind of highly artisanal approach to spirits, with its focus on intensity of aromas and flavors, means the price is going to be higher—but so is the ratio of quality to price. With tariffs and inflation, more people are drinking less, including spirits, but people are still drinking, even if that means “less but better.”
As Jason Wilson pointed out just a few weeks ago here at Everyday Drinking, fewer and fewer people are drinking cheap, crappy wines anymore—not even when beginning their wine-drinking journey. The wine industry should be embracing the reality that people want high-quality, organic practices, transparency, and sustainability. Consumers are looking at not just what’s in the bottle, but what went into making it, too.
There’s a real possibility that the spirits industry may face a similar reckoning, very soon. Before it does, maybe it’s time that it takes a page out of the Cazottes playbook.
Six Spirits from Cazottes, Made The Right Way
Goutte de Reine-Claude Dorée, 375 mL ($65)
After harvest, greengage plums are dried on racks (a process called “passerillage”) and the stones and stems are removed manually before fermentation and distillation. Notes of dried and fresh white-fleshed fruits, marzipan, sweet baking spices, herbal tea, with floral and savory notes. It reminds me of a scene in The English Patient, when the badly burned Count Almásy, played by Ralph Fiennes, is fed foraged fruit by his nurse Hana. Savoring the intense taste, he proclaims: “It’s a very plum plum.” (45% abv)
Goutte de Poire Williams, 375 mL ($125)
Ripe Williams pears are dried in passerillage, then meticulously destemmed, deseeded, and any blemishes removed by hand, before fermentation and distillation. Crystalline fruit, heady floral notes, sweet almond pastry, tea leaves, citrus peel, and pleasant woody aromas, with a mineral finish and a lovely creamy texture. (45% abv)
Tomates, 375 mL ($70)
Cazottes includes more than 280 varieties of tomatoes in this liqueur. Handpicked at peak ripeness, they are destemmed and quartered (also by hand), and macerated in Cazottes’s eau de vie—made from Jurançon Noir grapes—for 10 months. It’s redolent of fresh summer tomatoes, olive tapenade, oregano, sultanas, tomato leaf, even a touch of fish sauce. The rich flavor, almost sweet, is balanced by refreshing acidity. It’s bright, saline, and incredibly detailed. There’s unlimited potential here for cocktails and food pairings. (18% abv)
Guignes & Guins, 375 mL ($70)
This liqueur is made from sour cherries growing wild on the Cazottes domaine, harvested and pitted by hand, then macerated in eau de vie for 14 months. So very cherry, with aromas and flavors of cooked and tart fruits, red and purple flowers, mint and other fresh herbs, cloves, a hint of forest floor. It’s wild and sexy, a snapshot of super-ripe juicy fruit preserved in a bottle. (18% abv)
Coings Sauvages, 375 mL ($70)
This liqueur is from wild quince found growing throughout the orchards and hedges of the estate. The fruit is dried, destemmed and deseeded, then macerated. Delicate, fresh, floral and expressive, with notes of waxy yellow fruits, citrus, meadow grasses and flowers, honey, and marzipan. It’s slightly sweet, but a savory component and lifted acidity keeps everything in perfect balance. The finish is long and lingering. (18% abv)
Fleurs de Sureau, 375 mL ($72)
This will ruin St-Germain for you forever. An aperitif made from Cazottes domaine elderflower blooms picked by hand. Painstaking work is taken to pick only the petals for maceration. Aromas and flavors of pure, vibrant blossom and fresh-cut stems, powerful but simultaneously delicate and filagreed, with a long finish that carries a pleasant tisane quality. (17% abv)
I was introduced to his project last year in a event for "Vivent les vins libres" in Marseille and it was the most mind-blowing experience of this fair to me. Their tomatoes distilled is awesome!