Welcome to Winter

With December arriving, the island has settled into a quieter and slower rhythm. The roaring river of summer tourists has shrunk down to a slow, 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 others 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 to be put in cold storage until the time is right to turn them into cider. This is the time of year when we pivot 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 is cooled to a temperature at which most of the water freezes out of solution, and a much more concentrated juice that is very rich in sugars, tannins, and flavour can be separated out. This is then fermented 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 by the fire on a winter’s evening, or it can make a great addition to a cocktail. You might even splash some on some vanilla ice cream with a bit of caramel syrup for a sweet treat.

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 hold up to some of the richer, heartier foods of this time of year.

We’re also bringing back our Ginger Root, a well-loved classic from our wide-release lineup. It’s recently been unavailable since transitioning 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.

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 merry and bright holiday season! Thanks for your continued patronage. Cheers!