The Story of 2022 Three Year Pommeau

This, the next pommeu release, is our 5th bottling of pommeau since we first began making it. One of the inspirations for making pommeau, is the idea that in an organically managed, biennial cider orchard, there is an opportunity to bank the abundance of an “on-year” in barrels in the form of spirits. Along these same lines, pommeau offers the opportunity to take more cider-making risks, such as fermenting with wild yeasts (something we started around the same time as the pommeau), knowing that a fermentation too funky to be bottled, can still be distilled. Finally, we discovered that we love the flavor of pommeau made from cryo-concentrated juice. Cryo-concentration is the process of freezing and thawing unfermented cider in the winter to concentrated sugars (and acid and tannins and most everything else). The first draw off the frozen tanks is about 1/6th the original volume and around 36 brix (% sugar). It is fermented into ice cider. But for many years we did not know what to do with the second draw of 28 brix-- rich and caramelly but not quite enough sugar for ice cider. Now, it has a home in the pommeau. And so these three issues came together in a way that made our whole operation more holistic.

This particular batch was made from spirits distilled from our own cider, made with our own apples blended with the second draw of cryo-concentrated juice and put into barrels in the early part of 2019. We blended in a bit of Ellis Bitter cider and fresh cryo from this year to round out the blend.

Autumn Stoscheck Cider Maker/ Orchardist