Fall is on its way…

Summer is drawing to a close here on Salt Spring. Labour Day weekend is the unofficial finish line for our hardworking tasting room and restaurant staff, after which the busy rush of high tourist season steadily slows down to the more mellow pace of the fall. It’s been another lively summer on the island, with as many visitors as ever to our cidery and its thriving restaurant.

Labour Day is also the unofficial starting line for the busy rush of the harvest and pressing season. The apples and pears are now hanging heavy on the island’s trees, and it’s this time of year when we get back to our roots, and focus on picking and pressing the fruits that make this island so special. The harvest is something of a community event that includes both commercial orchards as well as our friends and neighbours who sell us fruit from their own trees, many of which are the unique heritage varieties that give so much character to our ciders. It’s hard work, but it’s a beautiful thing to be a part of.

For this fall’s shipment, we’re continuing to showcase our work with naturally carbonated ciders. We have a new pét-nat cider that was bottled last year that we’re aptly calling our Pét-Nat ‘24. For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, ‘pét-nat’ is short for pétillant naturel, or naturally sparkling, and it involves a process of carbonation also known as the ancestral method. Essentially, the cider finishes its fermentation in a sealed bottle, so that the CO2 that’s created as a byproduct doesn’t escape but instead carbonates the cider. The result is usually a more lively effervescence than force carbonating with pressurized CO2, yet the bubbles tend to be smaller and finer, giving it a softer mouthfeel, a bit like Champagne. The Pét-Nat ‘24 was pressed from apples from Salt Spring Island, including Yarlington Mill, Prima, Gloria Mundi, King Cox, and Blenheim Orange, among others. It was fermented using native yeast, and it’s been aging for over a year now to allow this excellent dry cider to mellow and mature properly.

There’s also a continuation of our explorations of cider and grape combinations and co-ferments with a lovely little creation we’re calling Grapeskin Perry. For this cider, we pressed Salt Spring Island heritage perry pears to create a wild fermented pear cider. After aging a bit, it then sat for about a month on the skins of some Siegerrebe wine grapes that our friends at Kutatás Wines here on the island provided us. Siegerrebe is a German white wine variety that’s been planted on Vancouver Island and the Okanagan, and wines made from it usually have an aromatic and somewhat sweet character. The skins complement the pear beautifully, lending a hint of rose and lavender to the nose, and there’s just a whisper of tannins for a note of jasmine green tea on the palate. It’s still very pear-forward, and the pears lend their usual gentle sweetness to the cider as well.

From our larger releases, we’ve included our most recent batch of Salted Pineapple Perry. This one wasn’t quite ready for the June edition of Cider Club, but we still just have to share it since it’s once again been such a hit this summer. It’s a pear cider base with a generous splash of pineapple juice and a hint of sea salt—just enough to tease your taste buds and accent the pineapple. It’s a great summer sipper, but it’s also a treat anytime you need a little injection of sunshine in your life.

For those after more classic autumn fare, this shipment also includes the latest batches of our Farmhouse Scrumpy and our Pear ciders. Scrumpy ciders take their name from a slang term from English cider country, “to scrump,” which means to steal or scavenge apples, often done by workers and common folk during the fall harvest. Fittingly, a scrumpy is a cider that is less about refinement, and more about bold flavours, high alcohol content, and even a bit of earthy funkiness, and our Farmhouse Scrumpy pays homage to that tradition.

On the lighter and brighter side, we have a small release of Pear, currently unavailable to our off-island retailers, to welcome the fall. This is a true perry, meaning it’s made with no apples, just pears. This is something of a rarity among North American cideries, in part because proper perry pears, or pears bred and cultivated for cider production, are hard to find in this part of the world, and in part because pears can be very tricky to press. They tend to slip and smear and are generally hard to get much traction on. That said, it’s worth the trouble—a true perry has a wonderful, gentle sweetness that comes from the un-fermentable sugars found in these fruits.

And, for those after a blended cider from our classic lineup, we’ve included a bottle of our Bitter Orange Rosemary. This one is a fave in our tasting room all year round, but the savoury spice of the rosemary and the almost gingery synergy it creates with the orange liqueur and bitters make it especially well-suited to the fall and winter.

Once again, we’re again 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 beautiful fall season! Thanks for your continued patronage. Cheers!