Between different producers, apple variety blends, and age categories, the spectrum is broad. Production can even vary in how the apples are picked.
While some producers rely on Newtonesque scenes of apples falling from their branches, others will make haste by harvesting with special machinery that will shake 'em off. Nevertheless, it's never just a game of comparing apples to apples when it comes to Calvados.
One of the most revered producers from AOC Calvados, Michel Huard's grandson Jean-Francois Guillouet, carries on the family legacy with roughly 30 different varieties of primarily sweet and bittersweet apples. Distilled in a traveling column still before being aged in 400-liter barrels that are so far seasoned they're nearly black, the result is a mastery of complexity and structure that'll live on for ages.
Northeast from there, in the Pays d'Auge, the iconic Calvados production of Famille Dupont comprises 13 apple varieties that grow smaller in size due to the poorer soils of chalky marl. Double distilled in a Charente style alembic, the range includes all of the main aging categories and offers some of the most distinguished Calvados bottlings in all the land.