During our sabbatical year in Burgundy during the 1990s, we discovered that a neighbor of ours produced Crême de Cassis. We had long been fans of kir, the apéritif made from splashing Crême de Cassis into a simple white wine, and we enjoyed having a source just down the road. When we returned to the States we found that all the available cassis was a far cry from that of our neighbors. The commercial stuff from the big cordial houses was flat and hot, and the fruit flavors were muddy and vague. Our former neighbors stopped making it not long after we left France, so for years we had only the memory of really good kir.
In 2016 we discovered the finest Crême de Cassis we ever tasted, one superior by leaps and bounds to the stuff peddled everywhere in the US. On the Ferme Fruirouge, tucked into the hills of the Hautes Côtes de Nuits above the Côte d’Or, Sylvain and Isabelle Olivier raise fruit organically and biodynamically, then transform it into jams, jellies, extracts and syrups of all sorts. The Olivier family has been on the farm for nine generations — and the farm has produced cassis since the 1600s — but it is the current owners who have over the course of twenty years developed a highly respected range of fruit products. We are pleased to import their Crême de Cassis, Crême de Pêche (peach), Crême de Cerise (cherry) and Crême de Framboise (raspberry).
