Every fruit brandy tradition starts the same way — with more fruit than a village could eat, and a winter to get through.

Normandy's cider brandy and America's first spirit. Home to Calvados (France) and applejack (New Jersey, since the 1600s).

Alsace's spiritual home fruit. Famous for the Williams (Bartlett) pear and the astonishing "pear in the bottle" (prisonnière).

The Black Forest's clear, unsweetened cherry brandy. Pits left in for a marzipan note. The engine of Black Forest cake and cheese fondue.

The deepest, most culturally loaded family. Serbia's national spirit, UNESCO-listed, and a Passover tradition. One spirit, a dozen names.

The fruit that teaches the whole category's key idea: too low in sugar to ferment, so it's made as a Geist — macerated in spirit, then redistilled.

Austria's Wachau valley and Hungary's Great Plain. High aromatics, low yield — the natural premium tier of the category.

Native to China, a global crop only since the 20th century, and a genuinely new frontier for distillers. No fake ancient tradition — that's the point.

One of the most prized eaux-de-vie and rakijas — intensely floral, honeyed, and expensive because the fruit gives so little spirit.

A pre-Prohibition American tradition — George Washington made peach brandy at Mount Vernon — now revived by craft distillers, alongside Balkan and Hungarian peach spirits.

The rare fig brandy — including Mahia, the traditional Moroccan Jewish fig-and-anise spirit now made in the US by Nahmias et Fils.

The foraged cluster: sloe/blackthorn, rowanberry (Vogelbeere), elderberry, rosehip, cornelian cherry, and other wild fruit — usually made as a Geist.

The experimental edge: American and tropical craft distillers applying eau-de-vie technique to mango, banana, walnut, chili, citrus, herbs and even Douglas fir.