The 2013 Crop Report

2013 Vintage, the Year of Plenty

 

 Unlike most farmers, for wine and cider makers the season does not conclude at harvest.  In fact, the collection of fruit is just the halfway point in a season that extends 12 months or more.  Think of the harvest like the caterpillar/ butterfly cocoon stage, cider emerges in a different form but the new appearance is the extension of the same life.  That said, we annually release our crop report in the spring rather than the fall because the winter affects this new life form just as much as the summer influences the apple.

 

   The 2013 year for apples here in the northeast will be remembered as a year of plenty.  An average weather season start-to-finish saw no significant frost damage, no setbacks from cicadas (as was expected) or other pests, the heat spell of July did not couple with humidity and we dodged a blight year, and the fast fall of September reversed course in October extending the season slightly later than usual.  This last part was welcome news for farmers because it took a long time to harvest the near record quantities of apples during this “on-year”, which was doubly bountiful a year after 2012’s decimating frost.  (Apple trees which are naturally biennial and triennial but they respond to reproductive interruptions like frost by putting out greater fruit quantities at their next opportunity.)  The pear crop was the exact opposite.  Pears survived the 2012 frost and produced a full crop the that year, and in turn, they took 2013 off to recover.  We foraged 6 bushels of wild pears compared to 220 bushels wild apples.  

  That’s the apples.  The cider, on the other hand, was adversely affected by the warm spell of October.  The early apples fermented too quickly and they will not play a significant roll in the blends, save for their tannic or acidic properties.  But the late apples were set-up perfectly by a frigid late autumn/ early winter.  The cellar temperature was a perfect 55 degrees December 21st and it slowly dropped at the ideal rate corresponding the sugar-to-alcohol conversion.  The ciders pressed in November and December reached 90% dryness and stopped fermenting in February when the cellar hit 48.  Now in March it is at 45.  We have never fermented in consistently frigid winter such as this, temperatures in each of the 4 winter months have been below zero, and the ciders have yet to clear and finish.  We hope for cosmetic reasons the turbidity breaks with the spring warm up, but if it does not clear we can say with sincerity that this unique vintage has found a visual way to express the season.  

Italo Calvino on Cider?

We all know how embarrassing it is when someone tries to tell a joke but lacks tempo and gets everything wrong.  In defense of certain virtues in art Italo Calvino provides the perfect metaphor for the cider maker (here cider stands in for "novella")...

  Cider is a horse, a means of transport with its own pace, a trot or a gallop according to the distance and ground it has to travel over.  The listed defects of a clumsy cider maker are above all offenses against rhythm, as well as style, because he does not use the expressions appropriate either to the characters (the land, the season, the cultivar) or to cider itself.  In other words, even correctness of style is a question of quick adjustment, of agility of both thought and expression. 

2014 cider vs. 1814 cider

  Recently I was talking with Ben from The Queen’s Kickshaw, a landmark cider-restaurant in NYC, and he challenged my assertion that early Americans drank history's best cider.  I’ll skip the pros and cons of both arguments but I’m revisiting the thought now in lieu of having just visited John Bunker of Fedco Trees, a nursery and growing resource, in Maine.  Among the many oversights I’m guilty of when I assume 1814 to be the better cider era is the ability for today's cider makers to pick and choose their peers.  What with rapid transportation and instant world communication, we have at our disposal something very adventageous for good cider.
   It's probable that back in the early 1800’s my only sources for inspiration would be other local apple millers and nearby homestead cider makers. Maybe they were learned, but if they weren't my growth would be limited to what was locally only known about apples and cider making.  Now with instant communication, vast markets, and trade groups we are able to "find one another" like never before.  I am able to hand-select my peers from Maine to California, from Australia to Europe.  As a small community spread far and wide today’s networks do, in fact, create cider culture.  And we are able to find the cultural niche that best fits our personal standards and beliefs.   

  I still believe the soil was infinitely better, agricultural practices were better, and the level of community involvement goes unchallenged- it just was better.  The spiritual link to cider is not at a level comparable with 200 years ago but in certain segments of today’s cider community we are discovering our own holism and we are in better position to apply it.