2016 ESSENCE ICE CIDER
Ice Cider from the Finger Lakes SOLD OUT
$26 | 750 ml
Lemon curd and burnt brown sugar on the nose. Candied lemon and ginger in the mouth along with plenty of weight and body. The finish is sweet at first but ends in puckering green apple.
Serving Suggestion:
Ice cider is made to be, or to accompany, dessert. For elegant simplicity, pair with a sharp bleu cheese. It also excels with warm spice desserts like a ginger cookie, or creamy desserts like crème caramel or crustless cheese cake.
The Story of Essence 2016
French Canadian apple growers were said to have invented ice cider, but there is no record to substantiate this. Regardless of its origins, ice cider is a unique expression of the apple.
We make this ice cider through a process called cryo-concentration. We set aside late harvested dessert apples in our barn to use in the winter. When the weather looks right, we press them and put the juice outside in tanks to freeze. As it freezes and thaws, the water begins to freeze solid as ice while the sugar begins to concentrate in the center of the tank. When it reaches the brix we want, we extract that sugary portion, leaving behind 5/6ths of the liquid frozen as ice.
We estimate that there are about 30 apples, minus the water, in every bottle.
Pulled out of the tank at around 32 brix, this nectar ferments very slowly. We taste it regularly, and when we like the sugar acid balance, we stop the fermentation early. And it’s the sugar acid balance that we really love about this dessert beverage. At nearly 16 grams per liter acidity, the finish is long and soaring allowing you to savor the warm, rich aromatics.
Autumn Stoscheck Cider Maker/ Orchardist
Production Notes:
- Late harvest fruit was stored outside, pressed in January, and set out in tanks to freeze
- Cryoconcentrated juice was collected at 32 brix
- The fermentation was stopped at 13% residual sugar
- 30% wild ferment, 70% inoculated
- 100 cases made
Numbers:
- Residual Sugar 13%
- Alc/Vol 10%
- pH 3.6
- Titratable Acidity 15.6 g/l