The 2021 Vintage

  Two things to know about the 2021 growing season:

(1) There was an unprecedented amount of rain in the Northeast last summer and the ground was extremely saturated throughout the fall (in fact, it’s still wet from all the rain!) This is problematic for the crop for several reasons: the water makes the apples heavier, the humidity promotes defoliating fungal diseases, but especially, and in combination with the above, the gray skies means less sunlight. As you know, wine fruit is best well ripened.

(2) 2021 was a “mast year” for fruit and nuts. Beyond the farm, every few years the trees in the forest conspire to seed heavily, which is a natural strategy, but when this happens the forest, and the farm trees in communication with the forest, tend to be shy baring the following year. Ipso Facto, we are looking at a very light harvest for 2022.  

  For us in the Northeast, the two factors yielded more juice than usual, but unlike sweet cider makers this is worrisome for the quality dry cider maker. Quantity is almost never a good thing. And, in fact, the sugars and acids were measurably more diluted for wine and cider fruit growers throughout the NE region (don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.) Yet despite all the signs of a bad vintage, to my surprise, in the actual barrels was a far better cider than what I expected. Come spring, what I thought would be a “D” vintage ended-up a “B-”. (Phew, as Wordle would say.)  

  If you care for my opinion, let me offer two reasons why I think our ciders triumphed despite some serious obstacles:  

(1) Vintners who utilize a massive diversity of fruit varieties (as opposed to “selected” varieties) are allowing nature the chance to make-up for the vocal shyness of a wet year. Isn't that common sense? If a boss relies on just one or two strongmen, and those strongmen call-in sick, only a workplace with a healthy, diverse support-staff can continue with the job at hand. Advantage: the wild.  

(2) I believe that the long-term “struggle” of wild trees creates a foundation for expression regardless of the ground saturation. Like a battery, if a tree thinks (they do think) and adjusts to its conditions, the tree will store that memory in its cells. Character is subsequently expressed even when the power-source (the sun) is off! And if I’m right about this, and I am, we have yet another instance in which wild apple trees are communicating to us modern agriculturists something: "This is how to cultivate wine fruit, stupid!" In other words, struggle and are character are closely related.     

But that’s me.  

 

What Nuisance Animals Teach the Zen Apple Pruner

Our 200 year old house came stocked with a healthy population of Pholcus Phalangioides, an arachnid commonly called the Long-Bodied Cellar Spider because of it’s lengthy legs and skinny thorax -- basically the giraffe of house spiders. The amusing thing about this insect is that when it’s poked it spins around in circles like a whirling dervish so fast you can’t see it anymore, it’s just a blur of a wheel. But otherwise it’s a peaceful little guy that builds webs in the corners of the ceiling. We hardly ever notice them.

Anyways, we co-existed with the spiders for years but eventually their webs became too much for us. Dust would get trapped and they’d hang heavy like gray cotton candy. Visitors accused of us of living in a haunted house and we saw their point. So last summer we decided it was time to take back our dwelling and I vacuumed the ceiling, evicting the spiders, home and all.

 Then apple season came and went. The summer humidity went away and the stove fires sucked the remaining moisture out of the house. Then, as they do every December, red squirrels made their way in to test our cohabitation tolerance. They’d wake us up at night with all their running around and occasionally knock something off the counter. One morning I even discovered an entire bag of pistachio nuts emptied and presumably relocated somewhere in our walls. I can picture him now cracking the shells and watching Netflix on a tiny screen!

We’ve come to expect squirrels and mice to come in and establish winter dens but the noise only bothers us in December. Eventually, as the winter drags on their activity dies down and we can sleep again in peace.  We’re pretty tolerant of this pattern but this January a new pest has come inside to claim this old house: Mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes are ubiquitous in the summer and although they are annoying to humans we’ve evolved to tolerate them to an extent. But when they’re buzzing around in winter it’s something I can’t overlook. It’s only a small population we’re talking about (I get bit only once or twice a week), but still the peculiarity has made me obsesses on finding their source. I’ve flushed the P-traps under the sinks, checked the sump pump, and drained the dishwasher and washer machine basins. I’ve also quarantined the plants and went through all the cabinets looking for pots that might have standing water. Still, the mosquitoes buzz.

Then, just as I started pruning the apple trees it hit me like a flash:  I’m noticing mosquitoes now because I removed all the spiders!  I wanted a clean house so I removed the dusty webs but that action continues to reverberates throughout space and time, literally biting me in the ass.

Every branch cut from an apple tree in America causes a feather to fall from a bird in Australia. Then what happens next when that feather lands? And still, we plow forward. Cultivation.

 

More on the Art of Blending

 

 

I posted this chart last year and meant to say more about it (if you click-on the image you can enlarge and see the details.) At that time I said I was going to elaborate on how the chart could help with the “art” of blending but the season got ahead of me. The main thing I'd like to say about it is this: The chart is just a tool to help with the art, it's not a recipe for making it. Mastering the formal qualities doesn’t make a person an artist, it just makes them skilled. And there is a HUGE difference.

 “What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.”
― John Berger (towering twentieth-century English art critic)

 I chose this quote to illustrate that art involves more than just skill, the goal is ultimately about the search for certain truths (Idealism.) But I also chose this quote to speak of the importance of this quest. Notice how that whole statement changes with the addition of "And that would be our loss"! In addition to aspiring toward something, Berger felt compelled to say that our reception of art is just as much a component of "true art."

Artistic expression is about that relationship. It involves (1) an originator (in cider's case, this includes the land, the tree, the variety, as well as the artist/ farmer), and it involves (2) a receiver (in our case, the drinker or critic.) When a cider-maker aspires to artistry he or she assumes a deep relationship with the audience and they are on a quest to reach an ideal together. As with art, cider can show people what's missing in their world and it can bring them to a new place. In other words, cider has the power to change things.

This is profound shit we are talking about. But let’s face it, put in the context of the above discussion, cider isn’t usually art-worthy, now is it? Usually, it’s nothing more than an attempt to satisfy taste and not an attempt to elevate Man, or even just make us think. Not to knock wines that are made purely for aesthetic pleasure -- that can be art too -- but "true artists" (to use Berger's words) generally want more out of the relationship. They want a conscious connection between originator and receiver, a connection that sometimes has the power of change things.

How does my chart help with that? It doesn’t! My chart only helps cider-makers prepare for the woods. Being able to make green from the combination of blue and yellow isn’t art. Or, to use my chart as an example, making a bittersweet cider from bitters and sweets isn't art. In my opinion, being able to grow or dial-up certain traits (like colors) is only the beginning of art, like a hiker gathering supplies in a backpack, but it is not the art itself. If we have green on our pallet we have more arsenal should we discover a landscape that requires green in the painting, but it’s not about the pallet, it’s about the painting. What is the significance of the painting?

I think an artist who works in the medium of cider needs to know those formal properties, and they need to know the audience too, but they also need to aspire to something that isn’t already there. You can’t just pander to a market or to a predetermined expectation because that's not saying anything new -- it's already there. The quality of "true art" (again, to quote Berger) is that it has the power to change us -- to help us transcend. Without it, it would be our loss.

Let me give an example for those who prefer concrete forms: Cider, for me (and this is true for a lot of my colleagues too,) is significant when it connects humanity with the land -- that's the primary goal of most my ciders. So I want people to realize what it’s like to be in that landscape when they drink my cider. Hopefully, they ponder this and wonder what it's like to survive there, to acclimate to that location, like the trees do. I want that because that's precisely what amazing me about wild apple trees and I hope the fruit can transcend -- bring us into their world. So as an artist, I am unsatisfying if people can't make that connection. I'm aspiring to an ideal. 

But that's just my example. The chart doesn't paint the picture for me, it only gives me the ability to organize my pallet and see what I'm working with. More importantly, it shows me what I'm potentially working with. I could go on and on about my approach for days, because (no surprise) I have a million analogies about how composing a cider is like painting a picture. But if I did, I'd only be speaking about how I paint. I believe that every cider artist has their own message of originality, because everyone is working with different apples and different locations. All I intend on showing with this chart is how to organize and blend objective properties for your own use. I wish you the best of luck reflecting on your cider, or someone else’s cider, and discovering the greater significance.  

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The human imagination... has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.  -John Berger