Whaleback Farm Cider ‘Traditional Dry’ Apple Cider NV (375ml)
Location: United States, Maine
Winemaker: Gene Cartwright
Fruit: Apples
From the Producer: Bringing sugars, acids and tannins into a harmonized whole - punctuated by an ineffable aromatic essence - is the goal of our exhaustive sampling, blending and aging. We begin by tasting hundreds of different apples, both wild and cultivated, each harvest season. Some have enough intensity and character to become good cider on their own while others are better complemented by the peaches, plums, grapes, elderberries and aronia we grow here on the farm. All the fruit is hand picked before being pressed through wooden racks and cotton cloths. These natural materials allow us to cultivate latent wild yeasts on the fruit skins for a unique native fermentation that is the underlying driver of our cidermaking. The juice is cold fermented through the winter for 3-5 months before aging in oak barrels for another 2-8 months, depending on the cider variety. Throughout the process, we avoid pasteurization, sulfites, sorbates or micro-filtering so that we maintain the native yeasts and malo-lactic cultures, ensuring that our cider remains a living beverage that will evolve in the bottle over time.
We are lucky to be the current stewards of a few acres of farmland cleared and cultivated generations ago. With sandy loam soils rich in organic matter and minerals sited on a gently sloping south facing hillside, the place was well chosen for agriculture. We wanted to carry on the local tradition of apple growing while preserving some of the old cultivated trees and wild seedlings we had found. It also made sense to break out of the cycle of soil eroding seasonal tilling, instead creating a multi-story habitat for birds and insects. So we set out with grafting knives and shovels, slowly propagating and planting fruiting trees and shrubs in orchard rows and naturalized hedges. Apples were soon joined by pears, plums, peaches and cherries while the hedgerows filled with elderberry, aronia, mulberry, haksap, wild cranberry and trellised grapes. Bees for pollination and honey seemed a logical addition and increased our determination to apply only the minimal organic pest control.
It’s exciting to discover a forgotten old tree on your own, but sharing that discovery with others is where things really get interesting. Joining together with a larger network of people devoted to regaining our astonishing local apple diversity has been invaluable. We are immensely grateful for the boundless fruit exploring enthusiasm of those who started this process of re-discovery. Their passion for these apples, but more importantly, for the stories of small farms in rural Maine, adds layers of meaning to the slow, steady work of orcharding. Their efforts are embodied in the Maine Heritage Orchard and have extended far beyond this incredible project into the community that has coalesced around farming, orcharding and cidermaking in Maine. Being a small part of this greater whole keeps us going every day.
Getting to know other cidermakers and orchardists opened up the boundaries of our own orchard project from collecting and preserving the small clutch of trees along our road to incorporating local, regional and even international apple heritages. Starting with two old varieties discovered and propagated here generations ago – Lincolnville Russet and Fletcher Sweet – we’ve added hundreds of varieties from Maine and New England. As implied by the name of our region, our apple heritage came by way of the old world and, in addition to trees from the American cider making tradition we’ve added countless others from places abroad - Somerset and Devon in England, Normandy and Brittany inFrance, Asturias and Pais Vasco in Spain. As our orchard matures, we hope to create ciders that blend the best of these great traditions with the unique apples that thrive here in coastal Maine.
Location: United States, Maine
Winemaker: Gene Cartwright
Fruit: Apples
From the Producer: Bringing sugars, acids and tannins into a harmonized whole - punctuated by an ineffable aromatic essence - is the goal of our exhaustive sampling, blending and aging. We begin by tasting hundreds of different apples, both wild and cultivated, each harvest season. Some have enough intensity and character to become good cider on their own while others are better complemented by the peaches, plums, grapes, elderberries and aronia we grow here on the farm. All the fruit is hand picked before being pressed through wooden racks and cotton cloths. These natural materials allow us to cultivate latent wild yeasts on the fruit skins for a unique native fermentation that is the underlying driver of our cidermaking. The juice is cold fermented through the winter for 3-5 months before aging in oak barrels for another 2-8 months, depending on the cider variety. Throughout the process, we avoid pasteurization, sulfites, sorbates or micro-filtering so that we maintain the native yeasts and malo-lactic cultures, ensuring that our cider remains a living beverage that will evolve in the bottle over time.
We are lucky to be the current stewards of a few acres of farmland cleared and cultivated generations ago. With sandy loam soils rich in organic matter and minerals sited on a gently sloping south facing hillside, the place was well chosen for agriculture. We wanted to carry on the local tradition of apple growing while preserving some of the old cultivated trees and wild seedlings we had found. It also made sense to break out of the cycle of soil eroding seasonal tilling, instead creating a multi-story habitat for birds and insects. So we set out with grafting knives and shovels, slowly propagating and planting fruiting trees and shrubs in orchard rows and naturalized hedges. Apples were soon joined by pears, plums, peaches and cherries while the hedgerows filled with elderberry, aronia, mulberry, haksap, wild cranberry and trellised grapes. Bees for pollination and honey seemed a logical addition and increased our determination to apply only the minimal organic pest control.
It’s exciting to discover a forgotten old tree on your own, but sharing that discovery with others is where things really get interesting. Joining together with a larger network of people devoted to regaining our astonishing local apple diversity has been invaluable. We are immensely grateful for the boundless fruit exploring enthusiasm of those who started this process of re-discovery. Their passion for these apples, but more importantly, for the stories of small farms in rural Maine, adds layers of meaning to the slow, steady work of orcharding. Their efforts are embodied in the Maine Heritage Orchard and have extended far beyond this incredible project into the community that has coalesced around farming, orcharding and cidermaking in Maine. Being a small part of this greater whole keeps us going every day.
Getting to know other cidermakers and orchardists opened up the boundaries of our own orchard project from collecting and preserving the small clutch of trees along our road to incorporating local, regional and even international apple heritages. Starting with two old varieties discovered and propagated here generations ago – Lincolnville Russet and Fletcher Sweet – we’ve added hundreds of varieties from Maine and New England. As implied by the name of our region, our apple heritage came by way of the old world and, in addition to trees from the American cider making tradition we’ve added countless others from places abroad - Somerset and Devon in England, Normandy and Brittany inFrance, Asturias and Pais Vasco in Spain. As our orchard matures, we hope to create ciders that blend the best of these great traditions with the unique apples that thrive here in coastal Maine.
Location: United States, Maine
Winemaker: Gene Cartwright
Fruit: Apples
From the Producer: Bringing sugars, acids and tannins into a harmonized whole - punctuated by an ineffable aromatic essence - is the goal of our exhaustive sampling, blending and aging. We begin by tasting hundreds of different apples, both wild and cultivated, each harvest season. Some have enough intensity and character to become good cider on their own while others are better complemented by the peaches, plums, grapes, elderberries and aronia we grow here on the farm. All the fruit is hand picked before being pressed through wooden racks and cotton cloths. These natural materials allow us to cultivate latent wild yeasts on the fruit skins for a unique native fermentation that is the underlying driver of our cidermaking. The juice is cold fermented through the winter for 3-5 months before aging in oak barrels for another 2-8 months, depending on the cider variety. Throughout the process, we avoid pasteurization, sulfites, sorbates or micro-filtering so that we maintain the native yeasts and malo-lactic cultures, ensuring that our cider remains a living beverage that will evolve in the bottle over time.
We are lucky to be the current stewards of a few acres of farmland cleared and cultivated generations ago. With sandy loam soils rich in organic matter and minerals sited on a gently sloping south facing hillside, the place was well chosen for agriculture. We wanted to carry on the local tradition of apple growing while preserving some of the old cultivated trees and wild seedlings we had found. It also made sense to break out of the cycle of soil eroding seasonal tilling, instead creating a multi-story habitat for birds and insects. So we set out with grafting knives and shovels, slowly propagating and planting fruiting trees and shrubs in orchard rows and naturalized hedges. Apples were soon joined by pears, plums, peaches and cherries while the hedgerows filled with elderberry, aronia, mulberry, haksap, wild cranberry and trellised grapes. Bees for pollination and honey seemed a logical addition and increased our determination to apply only the minimal organic pest control.
It’s exciting to discover a forgotten old tree on your own, but sharing that discovery with others is where things really get interesting. Joining together with a larger network of people devoted to regaining our astonishing local apple diversity has been invaluable. We are immensely grateful for the boundless fruit exploring enthusiasm of those who started this process of re-discovery. Their passion for these apples, but more importantly, for the stories of small farms in rural Maine, adds layers of meaning to the slow, steady work of orcharding. Their efforts are embodied in the Maine Heritage Orchard and have extended far beyond this incredible project into the community that has coalesced around farming, orcharding and cidermaking in Maine. Being a small part of this greater whole keeps us going every day.
Getting to know other cidermakers and orchardists opened up the boundaries of our own orchard project from collecting and preserving the small clutch of trees along our road to incorporating local, regional and even international apple heritages. Starting with two old varieties discovered and propagated here generations ago – Lincolnville Russet and Fletcher Sweet – we’ve added hundreds of varieties from Maine and New England. As implied by the name of our region, our apple heritage came by way of the old world and, in addition to trees from the American cider making tradition we’ve added countless others from places abroad - Somerset and Devon in England, Normandy and Brittany inFrance, Asturias and Pais Vasco in Spain. As our orchard matures, we hope to create ciders that blend the best of these great traditions with the unique apples that thrive here in coastal Maine.