The Other Fermented Fruit
A cornucopia of fruits abound in British Columbia, the most notable of the bunch holds the key to the valley’s status as a producer of serious, ageable and robust wine. And there’s a whole bounty of fruit beyond grapes — apricots, cherries, pears, berries and dozens of varieties of apples.
Sounds like a vintner’s heaven, but many producers are using that fruit as a base for making cider. That’s right, cider — which you may call first cousin to beer, rather than to wine. But cider’s production methods — harvesting, pressing, and fermentation, with no brewing at all — have far more in common with production of wine than of beer. And the quality of a cider, just like that of wine, is intimately affected by seasonal weather. In fact, cider and wine producers apply vintage dates to their product.
Uncomplicated cider
Kevin Klippenstein is no stranger to the importance of a good growing year, and more crucially knows what to do in a bad one. Co-owner of Klippers Organic Acres, Row Fourteen restaurant and Untangled Craft Cider, his entire life and his family's livelihood is rooted in the Similkameen Valley. Through community-supported agriculture, his farm-to-table fare, canning preserves and, as of 2019, fermenting apples, Klippenstein stays busy.
Klippers started in 2001 with only five acres. Nineteen years later, the acreage has increased tenfold. From the initial farm, the cidery and restaurant have blossomed together.
The team’s orchards are home to common apple varietals, as well as such cider-specific apples as the Newton, crabapples and pears. The aim is for clean ciders, expressing the land that they’re from. Whether through single varietals or blending apples with other fruits such as apricots, cherries or blueberries, Klippenstein is clear that everything is done with a purpose. He embraces traditional winemaking practices, fermenting the varietals separately and blending them together when ready.
The farm-to-table restaurant on site opened to great fanfare, garnering the number one spot on The Globe and Mail’s best metro Vancouver restaurants 2019 list, despite being a breezy four-hour drive from the city. The farm, however, is where the dining impresses.
“Everyone that comes into the restaurant talks about the experience,” Klippenstein says. Though people come for the food and the cider, the accompanying visuals enhance the experience. “You’re in the orchard and you see the trees while you’re tasting the cider,” he points out. And it’s proven no problem at all to convince people to drink cider with their food. The most inveterate beer and wine drinkers gravitate towards it for differing reasons, but they’re always keen on sampling.
This also rings true during weekend farmers’ markets. A quick splash of staff favourite Hopped Apricot cider (made with wild hops, apples and apricots) is always welcomed by customers shopping for produce. Of course, there are other alcoholic blends as well and, for the abstemious, there’s a soft cider that makes for a refreshing, natural apple juice. Plans are already underway for the 2020 vintage.
“The cider has allowed us to play more. We grow and sell food. Now we have a cidery and a restaurant. This allows us to be more creative about what we do with our food.”
Untangled Cider at Klippers Organics Family Farm
2200 Ferko Rd., Cawston, B.C.
untangledcider.ca | 250.499.2050 | @untangledcider
Infused with farm-fresh ingredients
Farming has been a way of life for the Taves family since the 1930s when their great grandfather, John, purchased his first plot of land in Abbotsford. Three generations later, Loren Taves, his wife, Corrine, and their children now farm more than 60 acres. The Taves sell a wide range of produce at various farmers' markets in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. You can also visit them at the Applebarn, a fun family experience on their farm, complete with hayrides, a petting barn, playgrounds, u-pick orchard, pumpkin patch and a country store.
Taves Family Farms is well-known for its farm-to-bottle coldpressed fresh cider, made from apples grown in the 10 acres of orchards. They grow varieties, such as Alkmene, Honeycrisp, and their signature apple, the Jonagold. The Taves' popular pasteurized cider is available at retailers throughout the lower mainland, so making the leap to a hard cider just seemed like a natural progression.
"Everything to do with apples is just in our DNA," Loren says. "Aside from creating our own soft cider, we started pressing apples for other people and felt inspired to make our own blends. We realized how much we enjoyed the creativity behind the craft."
Taves Estate Cidery launched its hard cider program in April 2020.The Barnyard series includes four apple-based hard ciders infused with farm-grown ingredients, such as gooseberries and currants. As well as the Estate series, a traditional apple blend that uses a mix of crab apples and cider apples for a semi-dry, moresophisticated flavour.
Loren and his team can't sit still. They're working on new flavours using the goji berries and pumpkins grown on the farm, along with a vintage blend slow-aged in bourbon barrels, coming this fall.
Taves Estate Cidery
333 Gladwin Rd., Abbotsford, B.C.
tavesestatecider.com | 604.308.3730 | @tavesestatecidery
Blurring the lines of cider and wines
Five years and four harvests have taught a lot to Robin Cairns, Michael Harris and Eric Paradis of Dominion Cider. What started as a hobby of three friends has flourished into a farm estate in Summerland where they produce three tiers of ciders.
Dominion's foundation series is straightforward, no-nonsense apple and pear ciders. In the discovery series, you’ll find ciders with a subtle, seasonal twist. Most excitingly of all, their Experimental series is a slew of ciders co-fermented with other fruits, aged in wine barrels or on wine pomace. These were a way for the three to work collaboratively with nearby farmers and winemakers — everything coming from no more than twenty minutes away, Cairns says — while playing with fermentation methods.
“This is our third year making ciders spontaneously fermented with wild yeasts,” Cairns says. “We started only doing it with our experimental ciders in smaller volumes and last year we started doing it in our foundation series.” Using the funky nature of the experimental series as a barometer, they were able to assess the wild yeast’s characteristics in order to judge if it’d work across in more of their ciders.
Surprisingly, the ambient strain that’s developed into a house yeast wasn’t nearly as funky as expected, which they deemed ideal for cleaner ciders. Nonetheless, by using other fruit and vessels, Dominion is still capable of introducing unique microbes into the equation and experimenting further.
Working with friends at TH Wines for barrels and fruit, as well as collaborating on local beers, Cairns is excited about cider’s versatility and how it’s been jamming itself between traditional definitions of where beer, wine and ciders start or end. It’s granted a lot of creative leeway and freedoms, something that the three have fully embraced.
Dominion Cider Co.
10216 Gould Ave., Summerland, B.C.
dominioncider.com | 778.516.8006 | @dominioncider
Traditional modernists
Mike Petaku, co-owner of Nomad Cider in Summerland, embraces similar creativity and curiosity. This fall marks their sixth vintage and a clear evolutionary track. As the name implies, Petaku and partner Brad Klammer started their journey by highlighting and paying homage to traditional cider-making regions.
“We’ve gone to the regions,” Petaku says. “We’ve worked with the cider makers, learning the processes and what kind of apples they’re using. We’ve taken it very seriously.” These were the stepping stones that helped determine Nomad’s direction.
Focusing on a low interventionist approach, Petaku and Klammer use apples and pears they grow themselves or source from orchards in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valley. They've allowed the yeast from the fruit itself to kick off fermentation, letting the growing region’s character shine. In keeping with that notion, Nomad has released three single varietal ciders so they can educate customers about what these apples taste like when fermented wild.
Following traditional guidelines from the top cider producing regions around the world has helped the cidery learn best practices for fermentation. However, they don’t stick with traditional rules slavishly; there has to be room for creativity.
Case in point: the Wild Golden Cider Ale, co-produced with Field House Brewing in Abbotsford. This beer-cider hybrid offers a Belgian golden ale aged atop apple pomace, offering acidity from the apple ferment and texture from the skin’s tannins.
This isn’t Nomad’s first foray into blurring the lines between cider and beer. An earlier product, the Belgian Rouge, brings together the funky house yeast used by Belgium’s famed Rodenbach Brewery and the flavour of locally sourced raspberries, cherries and cranberries. The end result is a slice of Belgian terroir in a product that boasts its B.C. origins proudly.
Nomad figures it has as much to learn from vintners as from brewers. To that end, they’re working with local wineries to use fresh and pressed grapes as well as barrels. Embracing the winemaking mindset, they co-ferment apples with grape must, ferment juice on pressed skins and age cider in wood.
The Pinot Noir Barrel cider is balanced by what Petaku calls a trifecta of tannin. Oakwood, apple and wine tannins come together to create a complex taste, balancing out the tart acidity. “When we’re doing the Pinot Noir cider, we’re using eight barrels, but they’re all different, which is fascinating,” he says. “They bring about more complexity and layers.”
Despite the depths to which the two go to make mind-melting blends, neither of them were professional cider makers prior to Nomad. The production side came rather easily: Petaku and Klammer were already homebrew buddies that got curious about apples. Both had worked in restaurants, been avid diners, and loved (good) drinks, which helped develop their palates and inform their cider-making.
Blending allows an element of the maker’s taste to insinuate itself into the final bottling. As for the vintage date — that’s a reminder that they’re still working at nature’s whim. “We want to communicate to consumers that this isn't a factory and this isn't a recipe. This is an agricultural business that changes from year to year,” Petaku explains. Things may taste similar to the year before, but never quite the same.
Nomad Cider
8011 Simpson Rd., Summerland, B.C.
nomadcider.ca | 250.469.6601 | @nomadcider
