Cider Review: Bulwark Traditional Craft Cider Original

The time has come to confess. I'm itching for travel. Many of my friends have camped, flown, or driven out to adventure in the last few months, while I've mostly stayed put. Today though I have a cider that traveled for me. What a fun way to taste another cider making tradition and another place, in this case I'll vicariously experience Nova Scotia through Bulwark Cider's Original.

Bulwark is appearing in this blog for the first time today. My friend Eric (of CiderGuide) sent me a bottle after I helped him out. Thank you, Eric! and this isn't one I would ordinarily be able to find easily. Bulwark produces cider in Nova Scotia, where they are affiliated with a winery. On the website, I read about their “5 Signature Apple Blend” including, Macintosh, Cortland, Russet, Honeycrisp, and Northern Spy. These are eating apples, but Northern Spy goes into a number of my favorite ciders. 

You can find out much more about Bulwark Cider on their website: https://bulwarkcider.com/

Or visit their Facebook page to see what's happening: https://www.facebook.com/bulwarkcider/

One reason to visit the website is to see what Bulwark says about sweetness and to check out their really great graphic that lays out the relative acidity, tannins, and sweetness of each of their ciders in one great graphic. (https://bulwarkcider.com/ciders)

About the Original, I'll let Bulwark introduce it.

Our signature cider, Bulwark Original, is a hand-crafted traditional cider, which is dry, crisp, and refreshing. 

It has a faint hint of spice followed by the Bulwark Original signature flavour that is achieved through our careful blending of five varieties of freshly-pressed Nova Scotia apples grown in the famed Annapolis Valley. 

The dry start is quite complex without the intense sharpness often associated with many traditional dry ciders. It moves quickly from dry to an almost wine-like and slightly mineral fruitiness before relaxing into a nutty floral finish. Great on its own or on ice!

Everyone knows how I feel about ice, but the rest of this is plenty intriguing.

Appearance: Brilliant, medium straw, lots of small visible bubbles

This cider looks fairly traditional, nice medium straw color, great clarity and some real bubble action. The picture fails to show the clarity because of the glass fogging, but its there.

Aromas: vinous, apple, plum, cold

What an interesting range of aromas, I get apples, plums, grapes, and some sense of cold. There's something rocky and mineral about the smell. The fermentation notes remind me specifically of wine, but there's also something a bit blunt in the background that's hard to describe.

Sweetness/dryness: semi-dry

The Original initially tastes sweeter than I expected, but that balances out quickly. It doesn't have a sweet finish. 

Flavors and drinking experience: Floral, spicy, caramel, high acid

The cider offers up high acid without necessarily being tart. There's a fermented flavor and a concentration of flavor that are unusual.

I really enjoy the Bulwark Original's caramel richness, particularly because it is balanced by chilled stone fruits. There's some spicy cooked apple notes as well. Its Floral, warm, and like the description promises, nutty. That's a lot going on, though the cider is not mediated with flashy additives, its different.

Overall, the cider has medium body, medium bubble and a clean fermentation, but one that still imparts character to the finished drink. The Bulwark is quite satisfying, and I love the subtle ways in which it surprised me. 

Cider Review: Citizen Cider bRosé

Apologies to everyone. I've been a terrible blogger this month. February is hard, what can I say? Trust me, I'm still thinking cider and drinking cider. Mea culpa! This is an older set of notes from a cider-tasting bonfire party back in the fall. It was the first real cold night of the season and wonderful fun to taste ciders with a group of dedicated folks.

Citizen Cider is a company I don't know well. They are a relatively young company out of Burlington, Vermont. They were also the group with the most visible showing at Cider Days in Massachusetts because so many of their employees were wearing genuintely cool matching Citizen Cider shirts. I found this on their website: "Citizen Cider was founded in 2011 by Justin Heilenbach, Bryan Holmes and Kris Nelson. Kris was working as a wine salesmen, Bryan as a chemist and Justin as a small farmer." So it sounds like they have a really inspiringly appropriate set of skills between them.You can find out more information at their own website here: http://www.citizencider.com/.

So, the bRosé has the less than helpful official description, "Cider + Blueberries + 3(bros) = bRose. An off-dry cider co-fermented with blueberries. (ABV 6.8%)" This is improved slightly when I hunt for more details and find that the apples and blueberries are all local Vermont grown: using local materials is something I admire in a cider.

Appearance: Brilliant, salmon, not many visible bubbles

Obviously this is a gorgeous cider. It looks lovely in the bottle and you can trust me that it looks even better in the glass. Absolutely brilliant clarity and a salmon pink color that .

Aromas: vinous, blueberry, baked goods

It smells both like wine and muffins. Hrm. Interesting.  I think the impression I get of muffins is because the bRose smells both fruity and yeasty, also a bit like a yogurt-y cheese. The vinous notes are the most noticeable, but the blueberry comes in second. I'm not smelling a ton of apples.

Sweetness: Sweet but well balanced

This cider does use sweetness to transmit flavor and it has plenty of fruit in the profile, but it does use enough acidity to remain crisp and sharp. Citizen Cider has done a nice job balancing a pleasant sweet cider.

Flavors and Drinking Experience: fine bubbles, subtle blueberry, plenty of acidity

The Brose tastes fairly acidic with low levels of tannins. The flavor is livened by lots of very fine bubbles. Blueberry is subtle in the bRose's aftertaste. Though it smells directly like blueberry the flavor is more like blueberry skins. That pleasantly bitter effect is reminiscent of stems as well; it improves the cider's balance. Overall, somehow it has a warm taste. My one caveat is that bigger drinks give me a moment of funny cereal funk.  Usually though this cider offers a clean finish with almost no aftertaste. 

This would be a great Valentine's Day cider for those inclined to celebrate the holiday. Or, since today is now Galentine's Day (look it up!) share this with your best friends. Those friendships deserve to be celebrated with delightful tastes, and this cider is an easy one even for not-yet-afficianados. Mind you, for all that good friend time you might need a few bottles! Enjoy.

Cider Review: Bantam Cider's Wunderkind

To celebrate my return from lovely, warm, comfortable Florida, I'm reviewing my very first Bantam Cider. You can check out their website here: http://www.bantamcider.com. It has a beautifully simple design and lots of excellent information. The company operates out of Cambridge, Massachussetts where they share some equipment with a small winery: a good practice for a young company.This is how Bantam describes its own identity as a cider company:

Bantam Cider was born from a proud family tradition of
winemaking and a desire to be part of a creative process
rooted in the local community.

We were inspired to do something special, to create a truly unique and
modern line of products that would reshape the way people experience
cider. We source our apples from local orchards and create and trial
cider concepts at our small lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By shar-
ing capacity with a regional winery, we are able to scale up production
to meet demand. This allows us to grow our business while maintain-
ing flexibility and a compact footprint.

We are a small enterprise in a world of big brands. While we don’t have
a big budget, we do have big ambitions and hope to challenge conven-
tional thinking about what cider should be.

We are committed to making creative and distinctive crafted cider using fresh pressed apples and high-quality,
all-natural ingredients. 

These are some pretty admirable (and lofty) goals. I'm curious about how their focus on innovation and experimentation will translate to taste. I like a good traditional cider in many different styles, so we'll see what breaking tradition tastes like.

Bantam makes a few different ciders. My wonderful brother-in-law picked the Wunderkind up for me during a family visit. He chose just the right one because this is their first cider, which is always a grand place to begin. The bottle didn't give me very much information, but when I looked up the Wunderkind online, I found much more. Here it is:

We are proud to introduce our first cider, Wunderkind.
Bantam's maiden voyage is named in honor of one of
the greatest modern adventurers, Amelia Earhart. She
was bold and courageous and never settled for any-
thing less than achieving the extraordinary. It is her
fearless spirit and sense of adventure that inspires
our own quest.

Wunderkind is bright and crisp and gently lingers on
the palate. It is made from a blend of local apples,
slowly fermented to capture subtle esters, and del-
icately balanced with a hint of flower-blossom honey.
It is the result of countless test batches on dozens of
apple varieties and yeast strains to arrive at just the
right combination of flavors, aroma and body.

Wunderkind isn't simply a new twist on a familiar
theme, it's a new story altogether.

Still curious about what they mean about a new story. Let's see.

Appearance: White, very pale, super clear

Bantam's Wunderkind just shines in this big gorgeous glass my family let me borrow. Obvious brilliant. The color looks nearly white, almost light green. The bubbles look like champagne bubbles in that they are so very active and fine. I wish I'd taken more time for photos, but getting photos and tasting notes while enjoying cider and family at the same time isn't actually as easy as I'd like it to be.

Aromas: Honey

I can smell just oodles of honey. Secondarily, the Wunderkind wafts off notes white wine, pear, and vanilla. It doesn't not smell very much like apple. Perhaps this is the innovation to talked up in Bantam's promotional copy. It smells back sweetened, which means that the cider was likely fermented to dryness and then sweetened after fermentation to taste. This is a very common technique for cidermakers producing on any scale. Smells lovely but different.

Sweetness: Sweet

The taste matches the smell in that I can definitely taste some significant back sweetening with honey on the finish. That really affects the character of the sweetness and the cider.

Flavors and Drinking Experience: sophisticated even while being sweet, creamy, and approachable

At first the Wunderkind tastes sweet, then it blooms into a creamy floral mid palate. Next, I get spices  and very easygoing, fleeting honey-vanilla on finish. What really sets the Wunderkind apart is that it isn't strongly fruit forward even while having plenty of flavor and sweetness. I experience this cider primarily as something light, sophisticated, and pleasant. It goes well with any number of desserts, and since I was visiting family I got to try it with several. I enjoyed it most with almond cookies. The  tiny bubbles seem to occur naturally and add wonderful texture and lightness.  The Wunderkind comes across as bright but not super acidic, very low in tannins, and very friendly.

I'd definitely bring this cider to party. It seems meant for light conversation and little desserts. I'm curious to try Bantam's other offerings. This one really worked for me despite not tasting very much like my usual favorites. Maybe they are achieving exactly what they were talking about in terms of breaking tradition?

Cider Review: Oyster River Winegrower's Hoboken Station Cider (including bonus cat + cider picture)

This cider showed up my collection recently after my husband went to our local cider store without me. I'd never heard of Oyster River Winegrowers, much less their Hoboken Station Cider. A cider from Maine! This is a first for me. Exciting! When I tried to find out a bit more about Oyster River Winegrowers, I used their Facebook page because their website does not appear to be current or operational. Oyster River Winegrowers' Facebook page however is full of interesting and useful information. They appear to be a small vineyard winery, farm, and cidery in Warren, Maine.  They say this about themselves, "We are a Maine vineyard and winery focusing on farming with draft horses and without the use of synthetic chemicals." And yes, the FB page has pictures of their horses. Too cute.

About this particular cider, their Hoboken Station Cider. I'll be piecing together information from a few different sources. The bottle says, "Produced in Warren, Maine from a variety of mostly esoteric apples chosen for superior cider quality. Dry and bottle conditioned." Bottle conditioned means that a second fermentation takes place over time in the bottle, allowing the cider to become naturally sparkling, in this case they use organic cane sugar for the bottle conditioning. One post on Oyster River Winegrower's Facebook page says this about the Hoboken Station Cider, "This Cider is dry, native yeast fermented from a blend of obscure more cider specific apples ( Golden Russet, Dabinett, Esopus Spitzenberg, Calville Blanc d'Hiver, Blushing Granny, Ida Red, and Golden Delicious) with heavier tannin content and high sugar content giving us 9% alcohol. It is a sipper, but surprisingly easy with wine like, or perhaps Belgian beer-like complexity and just a small amount, not so much to be distracting, of carbonation from a natural bottle fermentation."Let me add that the cider has a hefty 9% ABV; cider by winemakers, indeed!

Hoboken Cider with curious cat Amelia

Appearance: hazy,  intense mango

The color is more deep than with many ciders. When I look at my glass, I can see lots of still bubbles cling to all sides of the glass. A few move to the top almost by turns. This isn't a totally brilliant cider which comes as no surprise as it is unfiltered.

Aromas: ripe apples, dust, minerals

Primarily, I smell ripe apples that communicate a bit vinously. Slightly winey apples warmed in the sun. The secondary scent reminds me of mineral dust mingled with and followed by a hint of sweetness.

Sweet to dry: Semi-dry

Though this cider is plenty fruity, I'd cal it semi-dry. I really dig the level of tannins that balance out the fruits as I take my second and third sips. I can see the comparisons to both wine and Belgian beer. It does sort taste in waves and an early wine like wave of flavor is followed by a one that reminds me of yeasty slightly sour Belgian beer. This is pretty tasty, though I rather miss the smoothness that complex ciders can have.

Flavors and Drinking experience: apple, stone fruits, honey, hints of yeast

At first this cider tastes fruit forward and light. Winey notes bite the mid-palate a bit roughly.Honey whispers through the long finish. Pleasant amount of fine-bubbled carbonation. It feels warming because of the higher than average ABV. 

I'd pair this with heavier foods but nothing too spicy. Actually this would be a perfect cider to have with shepherds pie or a layered vegetable lasagna. This is also a great sharing cider. Invite people over and make this your pot luck cider of choice. Though everyone is putting out Thanksgiving recommendations, I'll add this one to the list as well. I think it's strength of flavor could really remain present and enjoyable through many of this holiday's big big flavors.