welcome to winter

With December arriving, the island has settled into a slower rhythm. The roaring river of summer tourists has shrunk down to a steady trickle of visitors: couples taking a cozy weekend getaway in the off season, university students popping over during a reading break. At our lounge and restaurant, the picnic area is quiet and empty, but in our dining room and under our heated pergola, there’s still a hearty bustle of folks enjoying each other’s company over cider and something warm to eat.

The apple harvest is finished and the hard work of pressing fruit has also come to a close. The apple bins are stacked and stored, and big totes of freshly pressed juice sit waiting to ferment or be put in cold storage until the time is right to turn them into cider. This is the time of year when we shift to making more cider for the year to come, refreshing our inventories, catching up on a few neglected projects here and there, and getting some hard-earned R&R. It’s a quieter time to be sure, but the work of cider making continues year round.

We have some great selections to share with you in this season’s shipment. We’re including a new release of our Ice Cider—our first since 2020! Ice ciders are traditionally made with apples that have frozen on the tree, but here on the wet and relatively warm West Coast, we use cryoconcentration to get the same basic result. The pressed juice of apples from our farm is cooled to a temperature at which most of the water freezes out of solution and can be separated off, leaving a much more concentrated juice that is very rich in sugars, tannins, and flavour. This concentrated juice is then fermented slowly at low temperatures and left un-carbonated, resulting in a sweet, desserty cider not unlike a brandy or an ice wine. It’s delightful to sip chilled and neat on a winter’s evening, or it can be added to a cocktail. You can even splash some on some vanilla ice cream for a unique dessert.

While our ice cider looks ahead to winter, our Garden Path cider is a little experiment that hearkens back to the summer. We blended cider from Salt Spring Island apples with locally harvested Oregon grape, a native evergreen shrub that thrives in the shade of our coastal forest floors. Its little berries are quite tart, so we balanced them with the sweeter flavour of strawberry and raspberry. It’s still a lightly tart, dry cider overall though, and it has enough acidity to balance and complement some of the richer, heartier foods of this time of year.

From the cellar, we’ve got what will likely be the last bit of our Ancestral Pét Nat. It was first bottled way back in 2021, and it continues to evolve as it ages. The acidity has mellowed, and there’s still some great complexity, with pronounced tannins, some subtle fruit notes, and a nice roundness from ageing on the lees in the bottle.

We’re also bringing back some well-loved classics from our wide-release lineup. Our Plum cider has become our customary December cider, and we’ve got a great new batch to share with you. Our Ginger Root cider has recently been unavailable since it’s transitioned to being a seasonal release for the fall and winter. It’s back with a bang just in time to add a little spice to the wintertime. And, we’ve also included our latest run of Saskatoon Berry for a sweet reminder of summer.

Once again, we’re inviting you to pick half of the ciders in your shipment. Just click on the button at the bottom of the page to go to our special Cider Club shop where you can make your selections for this shipment.

Best wishes for a winter that’s merry and bright! Thanks for your continued patronage. Cheers!