Interesting article in F&W by RayIsle on old-vine vnyds: OldVineVnyds
As I was reading it, I came across a paragraph lamenting (sort of) the loss of all the old-tree apple orchards in SonomaCnty as they were replaced w/ the far more profitable wine grape vnyds.
It is well-known the reverence many winemakers have for these old-vine vnyds as producing superior wines. The thought occurred to me, w/ the blossoming of the market for craft ciders, do these cidermakers have the same reverence for old-tree orchards in making their ciders?? Or is there any emphasis in varietal labeling of these craft ciders? So that they could charge more for their craft ciders?? Or are these cidermakers schmucks and haven’t learned what their winemaker brethern learned long ago??
From what I know, proper cider-apple trees take decades to mature, and can live for much longer. Cider pear trees I believe age into the hundreds of years. So my expectation would be that most high quality cider is, in fact, old-tree product. In fact, that is a big problem for any push to rapidly produce more hard cider. You can make it from more commercial varieties, but it isn’t really as good.
Every reference I’ve ever seen to Eric Bordelet’s Poiré Granit mentions that it is made from 300 year old pear trees, so that’s one example. It’s also a fantastic perry, though I admit I haven’t had too many others I can compare it to.
When I was in Normandy last year, a few of the cidre producers we visited touted the age of their trees but none of them labeled any of their cidres indicating the age. Reserve bottlings were based on oak aging.
There is a decent amount of varietal labeling in the craft cider world, but the vast majority of craft ciders are blends. You see some Gravenstein, Northern Spy, and other varieties made singularly.
In Sonoma County, cider makers really value the older apple trees, that are disappearing. However, there are more plantings of cider apple trees. Orchardists get far more per ton for cider apples than culinary apples.
All that said, the lack of true cider apple trees is among the biggest problems and biggest points of discussion in the cider industry.
The owner of PJs in NYC sold out and bought farmland and planted lots of heritage apples to make cider. The age of the tree shouldn’t matter but the cultivar does. They live a long time - the first tree planted by European settlers in 1629, a pear tree by a guy named John Endicott is still alive. It was already old then.
Of course, you have to remember that fruit trees obey the basic laws of botany, unlike grape vines. So pruning them can help produce larger fruit and you can renovate old ones, even though they may be over 100 years old, whereas grape vines are magic in that pruning and cutting is supposedly responsible for smaller berries and they need to be replanted every 30 years. At least according to several wine writers. To gardeners and farmers, they’re all woody plants.
But I don’t see apples and vines being grown in the same climate. The best apples come from where it’s really cold in the winter - Ontario, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc. I’ve yet to have a CA or WA apple that is in the same league.
I had an interesting discussion with a apple and pear packer in Lake Co, CA once. He said that on the West Coast, the Lake County fruit get ripe first, and they had a good market until the Rogue Valley fruit got ripe. The Rogue Valley fruit did really well until the Hood River/The Dalles fruit got ripe. In each case the better fruit was from an environment with colder winters and more daylight in summer. While I can understand not tasting anything really high quality from California, but I would suspect that the reason you haven’t tasted anything good from Washington/Oregon is that the timing is the same as the higher quality east coast fruit. Eastern OR/WA gets plenty cold.
Greg, why do you think the age of a tree shouldn’t matter to the fruit quality (or character), but it does in grape vines?
There are ancient apple trees scattered around Sonoma County. I know Peay has a few on their property (which used to be an apple orchard decades ago). The apples from those trees are quite delicious.
“Why are grapes more special than any other crop? In the early-to-mid-20th century, Sonoma County was blanketed with apple orchards. Now those orchards are mostly gone, replaced by vineyards. That makes sense, because wine grapes in Sonoma County pay 10 times more than apples do per ton. Sonoma’s orchards were unquestionably part of the region’s cultural heritage, but it’s hard to live off history when the going rate is six cents a pound.”
If you go further back in time, many of the Sonoma apple orchards replaced vineyards that died following phylloxera or, more recently, were pulled out during Prohibition. At least that’s from one source I read.
As for the desirability of old apple orchards, my assumption is that many of the trees are heritage varieties.
After all, the Gold Ridge apple is the only one to have a soil type named after it.
I don’t know anything about tree age as it relates to quality, but I know that apple (or pear) varieties are extremely important. Most of what’s used in North America, including those thought of as “cider apples” would be laughed at in Normandy. The acidity and tannins aren’t there for well-structured cider, and the end result generally lacks the complexity and focus of high quality cider. There are small pockets of growers who focus on real cider apples in upstate New York and New Hampshire, and probably some other places I don’t know about. Farnum Hill in NH is making some serious, high quality ciders from real cider apples, including a varietally labeled Kingston Black that is very interesting and ages well.
