You’ve probably heard of Terroir if you’ve spent an appreciable amount of time studying wine or going to tastings or even heard wine makers talk. Terroir. This concept is covered ad nauseum in the wine world, so the TLDR is:
Terroir definition from Merriam-Webster Dicitonary: the combination of factors including soil, climate, and sunlight that gives wine grapes their distinctive character Here also is the article from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terroir You are absolutely encouraged to do more reading and searching on the subject if you wish.
Maybe you have also heard a cidermaker say: “Cider is wine.”
I’m not sure who said it first, but I heard it first at a cider conference (CiderCon is hosted by the American Cider Association). While cidermakers badly want cider to be a distinct and complicated category all on its own, not associated with wine, alas, you will come to the conclusion that they are both made from juice (that is why the federal permitting body, the Alcohol and TobaccoTax Trade Bureau (TTB) classifies cideries and ciderworks, as wineries). After that, it follows easily that ALL agricultural products have the potential to exhibit terroir because they all feel the same effects of every other agricultural product grown outdoors. And then the question becomes, can we detect it and why do we care? The answer is: sometimes and marketing, but also our customers want to know the whole story because humans love a good story. So we will discuss terroir a little and then move on to the orchards we work with, what batches we make from their fruit, and how we detect the terroir of those orchards. A Granny Smith is always going to taste like that grocery story Granny Smith, right? Yes and no. The apple genetics will be the same and that will certainly be consistent enough for most people for most of the time. But when does a grocery store tell you this Granny Smith from See Canyon and this Granny Smith grown in Cuyama and this Granny Smith is from Creston, CA? A grocery story won’t give you this opportunity, but maybe a farmers market will. If you could get three different Granny Smith apples grown at three different farms, you would certainly detect some differences. One might have thicker skin or larger cells filled with juice. And the flavor would be slightly different depending on how much it got watered and how the soil is cared for, etc. There will be differences when those Granny Smith apples are crushed, pressed and fermented as well. It will be like tasting Pinot Noirs from Oregon, California, and France.
Granny Smith, first cultivated in 1868 in Australia, is still a very popular apple and will probably not have a lot of variation if produced by a large agricultural farm. It’s the small farms and backyards that will have the most noticeable terroir.
At Two Broads, we mostly buy California apples and California is a uniquely diverse state, with mountains and coast, inland valleys and a myriad of microclimates in between. It also covers the most latitude of any other state. This means lots of different soil types, lots of climate variation, which support lots of diversity in plants and animals. This means a huge potential for terroir. We are not specifically making cider to feature terroir, but we do notice it sometimes. Our smöl batch program is born out of working with small orchards in Creston, San Simeon, Mariposa, and even Julian sometimes in the mountains of San Diego County and this is where we notice terroir the most.
Let’s start first in San Luis Obispo at the Bridge Block orchard that we are leasing from The Land Conservancy. The apples are mostly Braeburn with a scattering of Dolgo Crab and Granny Smith for pollination and a few varieties we haven’t tried very hard to identify. It is situated two miles from the coast in a flood plain. We decided that dry farming is the way to go; the judicious use of water is great for our budget but also makes a really delicious apple, concentrating the flavors, and therefore, really lovely cider. We do see sugars fluctuate from year to year depending on the weather. A hotter year has high alcohols with less acid and a cooler year is lower alcohol with higher acid (or at least, higher detectable acid).
We work with two orchards in the area termed East Paso, an area suited to Cabernet and Zinfandel and grapes that can handle the heat. Fair Hill Farms east of San Miguel and Lewicki Ranch and Vineyard in Creston are very different though less than 20 miles apart. Lewicki Ranch is one of the smaller, most unique orchards we work with. It’s not a commercial orchard like Fair Hill, with their primary focus being horse breeding and grapes. The owners are very enthusiastic about plants and good food. They very much believe that variety is the spice of life. They grow quince (from which we make Darn Quincy and Three Quinces), peaches, apricots, pears, apples, blackberries, plums (from which we made our first batch of Plump), plumcots, pluerries, pistachios, pomegranates (from which we made Mme. Pom-pomme), olives, and all manner of vegetables, as well as lots of native drought tolerant plants to encourage local pollinators. Of the apples they grow, they have over 20 varieties of tree, which contributes a great deal to our Smöl Batch program.
In everything but grapes and feed hay, The Lewicki family are hobbyists and growing food for themselves with enough to supplement a few local restaurants and friends. Grapes grown in this region tend to have high sugar production, and so do the apples. The Lewickis do irrigate their trees, but it doesn’t plump the apples up like it would in an orchard with more mild summer temperatures. The heat means high sugar production in the fruit but also tends to dry the apples. We notice a high residual sweetness in some of the finished ciders from their apples, meaning this orchard likely has some water core, which results in the apples making a higher concentration of non-fermentable sugars. Another distinctive characteristic of these apples is a baking spice flavor in the finished ciders. The more lightly flavored apples, like Pink Lady and Granny Smith, are overwhelmed by this. The stronger flavored heirloom apples don’t even completely overpower the baking spice note. Because of our experience at Fair Hill Farm, we can surmise this baking spice character is likely influenced by soil amendment. Fair Hill Farm is certified organic. We buy Granny Smith of Pink Lady from Fair Hill. Their apples do what we would generally expect. But good, solid, tasty, farmer’s market apples. Nothing weird that we need to interrogate to understand these apples. We use them as the solid backbone for Bearded Queen, and Kumquat May.
Moving west gets us warm day temperatures with cooler nights influenced by their proximity to the coast. Silver Ladder Ranch is a family property tucked into the swaths and swathes of the hills above San Simeon with many varieties of apple, citrus, quince, and pears planted in small clearings around the property by the grandparents. Many of these trees are hard to identify without their tags and it seems the orchard map may have been lost, though the old farmers market labels have recently been found. While we would love to know all the apples they bring us, it is fun to have some mystery. These apples grown at Silver Ladder have a near perfect balance of acidity and sugars, generally making a very balanced cider. The moderate sugar production from the moderate temperatures make ciders with lower alcohol and more delicate flavors when compared to those of the Lewicki Ranch and Vineyard. With these apples, we like to make Feral September, August Blend, and a single varietal Pink Pearl. To conclude, terroir is a series of processes that gives food and drink a sense of place, flavors that can only come from very localized conditions. Though you can’t always taste a terroir, it is so fun and fascinating when you can. It communicates the often hidden processes you don’t see when it comes to making cider. Though it is less of a mystery, the story of the apples and orchards deepens your appreciation and even your enjoyment of the beverage. That’s one of the reasons we make cider, and we love to share it. You can absolutely go on this journey with us when you visit, or keep your eye out for opportunities at bottle shops. Check out the line up at Press Then Press and pick a single varietal that lots of cidermakers work with and get maybe three bottles.