Starting with the Yuzu
For this second batch of our original liqueur Ferrand Dry Curaçao Yuzu Late Harvest, we have once again teamed up with L'Agrumiste, one of the best yuzu producers in the world.
Located in Morocco, L'Agrumiste supplies us with sun-drenched, fully ripe yuzus from a very late harvest (hence the name!).
These delicious, expressive citrus fruits, with their sweet vanilla notes and rich essential oils, form the aromatic heart of our liqueur.
From fruit to liqueur
Once we've made our selection and harvested the fruit, we take it straight to our distillery at the Château de Bonbonnet in ARS.
Here the precious yuzus are cut into 4 to 6 pieces and placed in maceration bags before being soaked in our brandy, like large tea bags.
After two or three weeks, the yuzu-flavoured brandy is collected.
We could have stopped there, but in fact some of the flavour (and alcohol) is trapped in the flesh of the citrus fruit. To release it, we rinse the yuzus to extract even more aromas to enrich the first macerate.
As an added novelty for this 2nd batch, we also tried pressing the yuzus to extract more juice, but to tell you the truth... it wasn't much of a success!
The initial maceration and subsequent rinsing gave us plenty to work with. As for the rest, it's just the ups and downs of this kind of production.
However, you can count on us: we'll persevere and try a different pressing technique next year when it's time for the 3rd batch!
In addition to maceration, some yuzus undergo another process: we distil them in our Stupfler still for an extraction that will give an extra 'punch' to the nose of the future liqueur.
This distillation is carried out with the utmost care and strict control. Every 10 minutes, our distiller tastes the distillate as it leaves the still to check its quality down to the smallest detail, in order to obtain the optimum aromatic cuts for the final blend of our Dry Curaçao Yuzu!
After these first two stages, the production of our Ferrand Dry Curaçao Yuzu Late Harvest is not yet complete... But that's for a future article!
In the meantime, you can already find our infographic of the entire process here.
And of course, we'll be sure to bring you the results of this exciting process in a few months' time! This second batch promises to be at least as delicious and fragrant as the first!
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