Bress Harcourt Valley Cider 2016
Bress Harcourt Valley Cider 2016Bress Harcourt Valley Cider 2016
Blend composition by variety: Sweet Alford 32%; Kingston Black: 23%, Bulmers Norman 13%, Somerset Red Streak: 9%, Improved Foxwelp: 7%, Michelin:6%, Dabinety:5%, Stoke Red:3%, YarlingtonMill:2%
How It All Began
The story of Bress began with Adam Marks and his love for chickens. While making wine in Burgundy and Beaujolais in 1996, Adam heard that the finest eating chickens in the world hailed from a nearby town called Bourg en Bresse. Not one to make haste, Adam immediately visited a producer and witnessed first-hand their traditional method of breeding chickens. As a result of this discovery, Bress is dedicated to the famous chickens of France and what they represent – artisan production using traditional, age-old methods.
In 2004, Adam and Lynne Jensen came across a rundown vineyard and orchard with untapped potential in Harcourt, Central Victoria – a region where Adam started his winemaking career and where Lynne’s ancestors settled. Inspired by the mixed farming enterprises of France and Italy that they had visited on their travels, they had a vision of creating a place to welcome visitors to experience ‘The Bress Life’
They proceeded to transform the property into a home for Bress, a sustainable farm and a place for visitors to share a meal, learn something new and most of all relax and have fun.
Adam Marks
Bress Founder and Winemaker
A qualified viticulturist and winemaker with more than 25 years’ experience, Adam has made wine throughout the world for both large and small producers. Disillusioned with large corporate winemaking, Adam established Bress in 2001 with a desire to produce wines from fruit sourced from notable viticultural regions, using a minimal intervention approach in the winery. Adam is an entertaining character and his passion for wine, cider and sustainability on a global scale is evident in all that he does.
Cidrerie Du Leguer Brutbrut
Cidrerie Du Leguer BrutbrutCidrerie Du Leguer Brutbrut
An extra-brut cider, this expression is fruity, slightly mineral, with good length and liveliness on the palate. Apple blending: 5% bitter, 50% bitter-sweet, 25% sweet, 20% sharp.
Who says great French ciders must come from Normandy?! Not us!
Cidrerie du Leguer is based in Brittany, six hours drive directly west of Paris – so far west, the next step is the Atlantic Ocean. Here Cedric Le Bloas and his team craft artisanal ciders in very cool (ice cold) climate, farming a small 6 hectares of certified organic apple and pear trees. A Brittany native, Cedric completed his agriculture studies and travelled around the country and beyond, before stumbling upon what would become the Ciderie du Leguer.
After restoring the orchard, 2016 saw the first vintage. Since then it’s been a labour of love and hard work – as Cedric and the team take it up on themselves meticulously maintain the farm following organic principles, lovingly tending to trees aged from between two and thirty years old. The trees themselves house a wide range of indigenous varieties, including: Marie Ménard, Jeanne Renard (Bitter varieties) Fréquin Rouge, Belle fille de la Manche Kermerrien, Frijelach’, Peau de Chien (Bitter-sweet) Bedan, Dous Moën, Douce Coët Lignée (Sweet) and finally Judor, Locart Vert, Rouget de Dol, Petit Jaune (Sharp).
Each cuvee is made according to Cedric’s taste, however the same process is followed time and again. The trees are hand harvested three times between October and December, before further ripening in crates before pressing up to 4 weeks later. The ciders go through two ferments – the first lasting 5 months before bottling, followed by a 3 month fermentation in bottle. The ciders are bottled with no sulphur, just pure juice, naturally sparkling and spontaneous, no collage, only racking and filtering when required. All ciders are brut or extra brut.
As for the end result? These are exceptional ciders with a vinous quality, brimming with character, complex and acid driven with perfectly balanced fruit and tannins.
Domaine J. Cecillon Cidre Divona 2018
Domaine J. Cecillon Cidre Divona 2018Domaine J. Cecillon Cidre Divona 2018
Divona is a Celtic goddess of the sacred springs.
Soils – rich, deep loam soil
This tart apple orchard is located at the bottom of the deep and loamy valley floor, surrounded by forest on one side a stream on the other.
Arboriculture – The tall trees are protected from the wind by grassy strips, which promotes diversity. There were no added pesticides or insecticides in order to protect the environment. We are committed to keeping in compliance with organic production.
Cidrification – The apples were manually harvested from October to November. The fruits were stored in bags under shelter for better ripeness. The fermentation is managed in tanks and then blended with natural yeasts in oak barrels.
The cider is bottled in late April, with natural bubble formation and no added sulfur, non-carbonated and non-pasteurized. A second fermentation occurs in the bottle. Wild yeasts are necessary to make the natural foam, it can make some turbidity.
Dry Cider – Fruity nose, fine bubbles, light golden color, slightly dry with caramel and vanilla flavors.
Tasting suggestions – Ideal as an aperitif or to accompany wild berries.
Cool before serving at 8°C.
Eric Bordelet Poire Granit 2015
Eric Bordelet Poire Granit 2015Eric Bordelet Poire Granit 2015
A sparkling pear cider straight from Normandy, France. Eric Bordelet uses his family pear orchards, estimated to be about 300-years-old, to produce this cuvée. Very pretty with floral pear aromas, a hint of sweetness, and fresh acidity. A crowd pleaser.
History
After a long apprenticeship with some of the greatest names in the restaurant business and the world of wine, former sommelier, Eric Bordelet, took over the family business in 1992.
The property consists of 23 hectares of certified organic cider apple, perry and corme orchards.
Our commitment
Organic cultivation, alongside bio-dynamic soil treatments are currently the best adapted methods in terms of the quality of fruit. Our orchards have been certified organic since 1996.
Geography
Situated in southern Normandy on the massif Armorican, extending from the Domfrontais to the edge of the Mayenne and the Orne.
The property is situated on the great brioverien schists, “Grand Crus” sedimentary rocks from the Precambrian era.
Geology
“Argelette” is an iron rich reddish rock, schist like and quite soft, formed during the primary era and around 3 million years old.
“Granit” was formed in the tertiary era, hard because it is young, the fusion of two elements makes up the complexity of the soil and the limono-clay sub-soil.
Sidermaking
Harvested by hand, into wire baskets and then placed into paloxs. Due to the large number of varieties, fruits are selected from September through to December according to ripeness.
To create the final balance, each variety of fruit is processed individually: it is assembled, coarsely ground, gently pressed and the juice is racked and settled.
Ancestral fermentation in vats and then bottling takes place over several weeks, even months depending on the vintage, with more or less residual natural sugars (fructose) so no need to add any sucrose.
Sulphite in different forms (mineral or solution) is added. A total of SO² of between 50mg/l et 80mg/l depending on the vintage.
Fruktstereo Bellondie
Fruktstereo BellondieBellondie 2018
Fruit: Belle de Boskoop 90% Cox Orange 10%
Origin: Apples from the abandoned orchard in Dalby.
Pre-maceration: 24 hours
Yeast: Spontaneous fermentation
Additives: None
Residual sugar: 0g/l
Info: After pressing the pulp after 1 day of
maceration we put back some of the press rests to
open vats and pour over the juice. 3 weeks later of
soft punch down we again press it and bottle it direct. Orange cider from one of our favourite varieties.
Smell: Strong aroma. Punchy, earthy and acetic.
Initial Taste: Strong bite from acidity and carbonation. Pungent apple and light pear notes. Puckering to start, almost makes you wince. Acetic/vinegar.
After Taste: When carbonation dies, flavour remains almost unchanged. Pulpy, muddled apples are very minimum. Acidity is the key element here.
On ice: Almost the same, mouth-feel is slightly more tonic-like.
Additional Notes: The Fruktstereo Cider Revolution from Sweden is really a funk-stereo of flavours. Very acetic, puckering and dry, it’s an aggressive cider that is not for the faint of heart. One of the sourest ciders we’ve have, it would pair very well with food (as its not sessionable and food flavours might tame the elements). Very unfiltered so you’ll have to swirl the sediment well; and open with care and patience as it has a lot carbonation. The apple and pear notes are very muddled, funky and dank.
We make CIDER (and/or FRUIT PET NAT) from 100% fruit, fermented with its natural yeast and without any additives. After picking, crushing and pressing the different fruits we use neutral containers to ferment the juice, mostly plastic vats. During fermentation we bottle the juice and let the last part of the natural sugar ferment in the bottle, producing bubbles.
2016 was our first commercial vintage and we made approximately 3000 liters of cider and wine, divided in 18 different “albums”.
When we started off our only goal was to simply make nice, energetic, fruit driven, and very drinkable ciders from fruit that we picked ourselves, that came from abandoned gardens and orchards in the countryside around Malmö. We didn’t tend to put much of a focus on what we were using, so long as it tasted good. We began to realise quite early on that not only were we using apples and pears for our product, but we began including other varieties of fruits and berries. With these additions and for those of you who are aware of the Swedish system, it might come to no surprise that we weren’t even allowed to be calling our products “ciders”.
In truth, some of the beverages, even though they included apples and pears, were quite far from the classic style of cider that streams from the cider regions of France, England, and Spain. So we began to think, what do we call what we are making? When we began to export and tell the story of our product, we came to an understanding that we’ve stretched the quintessential definition of a “cider”, that possibly we have to define ourselves in a different category that stretches across boxes and borders as our products do.
A category already existing in the wine world is pétillant naturel or for short “pét-nat”. This is a wine made with the ancestral method which results a sparkling wine. The process, in short, is putting grape juice that is still fermenting in bottles, corking them, and allowing the fermentation to finish in the bottle which will create natural bubbles. Since this method was the most similar to what we use for most of our beverages, we decided to start terming our products “fruit pét-nats”. It felt like a far more defining term of what we’re actually making then calling all of our products ciders. We didn’t stop there, as we began to think that one can even specify the kind of pét-nat, even if it’s made of only one or two fruits. For example: “plum pét-nat”, “cherry pét-nat”, “apple-grape pét-nat”.
Another aspect to our products is that we pick as much of the fruit as possible ourselves, and with family and friends. First years 50% of the fruit were from private gardens and abandoned farms in Skåne. The other 50% were “waste fruit” from different places in Skåne. When the farmers can´t sell their stored apples anymore they contact us and we take what´s left and make our more easy drinking and fruitier cuvées.
Fruktstereo Cider Revolution
Fruktstereo Cider RevolutionFruktstereo Cider Revolution
Smell: Strong aroma. Punchy, earthy and acetic.
Initial Taste: Strong bite from acidity and carbonation. Pungent apple and light pear notes. Puckering to start, almost makes you wince. Acetic/vinegar.
After Taste: When carbonation dies, flavour remains almost unchanged. Pulpy, muddled apples are very minimum. Acidity is the key element here.
On ice: Almost the same, mouth-feel is slightly more tonic-like.
Additional Notes: The Fruktstereo Cider Revolution from Sweden is really a funk-stereo of flavours. Very acetic, puckering and dry, it’s an aggressive cider that is not for the faint of heart. One of the sourest ciders we’ve have, it would pair very well with food (as its not sessionable and food flavours might tame the elements). Very unfiltered so you’ll have to swirl the sediment well; and open with care and patience as it has a lot carbonation. The apple and pear notes are very muddled, funky and dank.
We make CIDER (and/or FRUIT PET NAT) from 100% fruit, fermented with its natural yeast and without any additives. After picking, crushing and pressing the different fruits we use neutral containers to ferment the juice, mostly plastic vats. During fermentation we bottle the juice and let the last part of the natural sugar ferment in the bottle, producing bubbles.
2016 was our first commercial vintage and we made approximately 3000 liters of cider and wine, divided in 18 different “albums”.
When we started off our only goal was to simply make nice, energetic, fruit driven, and very drinkable ciders from fruit that we picked ourselves, that came from abandoned gardens and orchards in the countryside around Malmö. We didn’t tend to put much of a focus on what we were using, so long as it tasted good. We began to realise quite early on that not only were we using apples and pears for our product, but we began including other varieties of fruits and berries. With these additions and for those of you who are aware of the Swedish system, it might come to no surprise that we weren’t even allowed to be calling our products “ciders”.
In truth, some of the beverages, even though they included apples and pears, were quite far from the classic style of cider that streams from the cider regions of France, England, and Spain. So we began to think, what do we call what we are making? When we began to export and tell the story of our product, we came to an understanding that we’ve stretched the quintessential definition of a “cider”, that possibly we have to define ourselves in a different category that stretches across boxes and borders as our products do.
A category already existing in the wine world is pétillant naturel or for short “pét-nat”. This is a wine made with the ancestral method which results a sparkling wine. The process, in short, is putting grape juice that is still fermenting in bottles, corking them, and allowing the fermentation to finish in the bottle which will create natural bubbles. Since this method was the most similar to what we use for most of our beverages, we decided to start terming our products “fruit pét-nats”. It felt like a far more defining term of what we’re actually making then calling all of our products ciders. We didn’t stop there, as we began to think that one can even specify the kind of pét-nat, even if it’s made of only one or two fruits. For example: “plum pét-nat”, “cherry pét-nat”, “apple-grape pét-nat”.
Another aspect to our products is that we pick as much of the fruit as possible ourselves, and with family and friends. First years 50% of the fruit were from private gardens and abandoned farms in Skåne. The other 50% were “waste fruit” from different places in Skåne. When the farmers can´t sell their stored apples anymore they contact us and we take what´s left and make our more easy drinking and fruitier cuvées.
Fruktstereo Rhubarber-Ann
Fruktstereo Rhubarber-AnnFruktstereo Rhubarber-Ann
Rhubarberann 2017/2018
Fruit: 40% Rhubarbs 30% Apples 30% Pears
Origin: Rhubarbs from Jan-Åke, the apples and pears
is waste fruit from local growers
Pre-maceration: 24 hours
Yeast: Spontaneous fermentation
Additives: None
Residual sugar: 10g/l
Info: The first pick of rhubarbs from 2018, super
green and tart blended with apples and pears that’s
been left over from the 2017 vintage all stored with flor for a couple of months. A bomb of acidity and salty freshness! FRUKTSTEREO is now addicted to vegetables as well!!
We make CIDER (and/or FRUIT PET NAT) from 100% fruit, fermented with its natural yeast and without any additives. After picking, crushing and pressing the different fruits we use neutral containers to ferment the juice, mostly plastic vats. During fermentation we bottle the juice and let the last part of the natural sugar ferment in the bottle, producing bubbles.
2016 was our first commercial vintage and we made approximately 3000 liters of cider and wine, divided in 18 different “albums”.
When we started off our only goal was to simply make nice, energetic, fruit driven, and very drinkable ciders from fruit that we picked ourselves, that came from abandoned gardens and orchards in the countryside around Malmö. We didn’t tend to put much of a focus on what we were using, so long as it tasted good. We began to realise quite early on that not only were we using apples and pears for our product, but we began including other varieties of fruits and berries. With these additions and for those of you who are aware of the Swedish system, it might come to no surprise that we weren’t even allowed to be calling our products “ciders”.
In truth, some of the beverages, even though they included apples and pears, were quite far from the classic style of cider that streams from the cider regions of France, England, and Spain. So we began to think, what do we call what we are making? When we began to export and tell the story of our product, we came to an understanding that we’ve stretched the quintessential definition of a “cider”, that possibly we have to define ourselves in a different category that stretches across boxes and borders as our products do.
A category already existing in the wine world is pétillant naturel or for short “pét-nat”. This is a wine made with the ancestral method which results a sparkling wine. The process, in short, is putting grape juice that is still fermenting in bottles, corking them, and allowing the fermentation to finish in the bottle which will create natural bubbles. Since this method was the most similar to what we use for most of our beverages, we decided to start terming our products “fruit pét-nats”. It felt like a far more defining term of what we’re actually making then calling all of our products ciders. We didn’t stop there, as we began to think that one can even specify the kind of pét-nat, even if it’s made of only one or two fruits. For example: “plum pét-nat”, “cherry pét-nat”, “apple-grape pét-nat”.
Another aspect to our products is that we pick as much of the fruit as possible ourselves, and with family and friends. First years 50% of the fruit were from private gardens and abandoned farms in Skåne. The other 50% were “waste fruit” from different places in Skåne. When the farmers can´t sell their stored apples anymore they contact us and we take what´s left and make our more easy drinking and fruitier cuvées.
Le Pere Jules Cidre De Normandie Brut
Le Pere Jules Cidre De Normandie BrutLe Pere Jules Cidre De Normandie Brut
This cider is produced from no less than 20 different varieties of apples. This gives it a very nice balance between the sweet, bitter and acidic varieties. After a fermentation process that is modified in its length to produce the “brut”, “demi-sec” and “doux” varieties, and light filtration, it is bottled in order to naturally develop its own natural gas. This gives it the fine bubbles that we are known for.
Tasting Notes:
Pours a hazy amber colour with a thin ring of head. The aroma of dry apples, mild barnyard, hay, glue and vinous notes. The taste is sweet apples, tannic notes, mild must and vanilla. Medium-bodied, good balance, soft carbonation. Best served over ice.
Producer and proprietor-harvester of apple cider, Calvados, Pommeau de Normandie and pear cider since 1919, on 45 hectares planted with about sixty varieties in a traditional orchard of standard trees, with pays d’Auge Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée status. AOC. The ciders are 100% pure juice like all French ciders or Perry must be by law and no addition of anything but sulphite under strict conditions is permitted. This is very important to bear in mind when in most countries of the world ciders can have up to 45 % water added, with sugar, aromatics synthetic or natural, sugar, alcohol, preservatives etc. Absolute authenticity and tradition guarantee that besides the strict French cider regulation, Le Pere Jules, do not pasteurize, nor add sulphites to their ciders, meaning their quality is unmatched, but they are unpredictable, subject sometimes to secondary explosive fermentation, making champagne to look tame in comparison.
Lobo Norman Cloudy Cider
Lobo Norman Cloudy CiderLobo Norman Cloudy Cider
LOBO NORMAN – 750ml
LOBO Norman is a small batch cider, made in a more European style – we make it using our traditional English cider apple varieties, apples with names like Kingston Black, Dabinett, Yarlington Mill. We sometimes use some carefully selected edible crab apples, and have been known to use an apple called the Winter Banana! Pink Ladies and Golden Delicious make it in sometimes as well. The cider apples bring tanin and structure, along with more complex apple and almost spicey flavours.
Bottle conditioned, preservative and gluten free.
It’s a delicious food cider – try with roast pork, lots of different cheeses, but it’s just as good by itself!
Norman is a wolf from Lenswood
ABOUT LOBO CIDER
Our ciders are cloudy, unfiltered, undiluted and 100% authentic. Crafted in the Adelaide Hills by a 5th generation apple grower teamed with a Somerset Cider Maker – real apples, real taste for real people.
Lobo is the product of Michael Stafford and Warwick Billings, Michael’s family has been growing apples for generations and Warwick, the cider maker behind this exquisite range, is originally from Somerset, the cider capital of the UK. He has been involved in making cider since he was 8 and once made a cider that was regarded as the finest in England at the time.
“We don’t filter out the apple. This cider is made from crushed apples that are allowed to settle briefly and then begin to ferment. After a period we add some cultured yeast and then continue the long cool fermentation. At the right moment the fermentation is arrested capturing the full length and depth of flavour that characterises LOBO and the cloudy wholesome cider is then put into bottles. A natural apple and yeast sediment is present in the bottle.”
Lobo means wolf in Spanish and Portuguese and is also a rare variety of apple – this is the reason behind the quirky wolf illustrations on all our labels. Each label has been designed by a different artist and the wolf embodies the characteristics of the drink itself.
Each Lobo product is a true masterpiece and brings joy to the senses! If you are looking for a gift – look no further, there is something for everyone.
