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White
Oak is online at:
www.crockett
design.com/
whiteoakcider
White
Oak Cider was inducted into the slow food movement's "Ark
of Taste" last year. The global movement is dedicated to
fighting fast food and preserving traditional dishes and
drinks as well as indigenous fruits and vegetables (www.slowfood.
com).
Produced
solely from the juice of organically grown Jonathan apples,
Wolaver's Organic Cider has a huge apple nose and a nice,
simple flavor that dries out toward the finish.
White
Oak Ciders are available at Belmont Station, Burlingame
Grocery and Pastaworks.
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I used to live in Cork City, Ireland. Rain or shine, old
Cork men would sit down by the River Lee, just outside my
flat, sucking down cider, one plastic 2-liter after another.
Until recently, though, hard cider has been as under-appreciated
on this side of the Atlantic as those Corkonian gents over-appreciate
it.
Used to baptize babies in the 14th century, cider later
paid the wages of farm workers in the 1700s and was hailed
as a cure for various diseases. Americans consumed 40 gallons
of hard cider per capita at the end of the 18th century,
and though Prohibition nearly killed the drink, in the past
five years cider has regained some of its original popularity.
Unfortunately, few traditional ciders made exclusively
of apple juice and yeast remain. Most major cider makers
use concentrate, adding water and citric acid after the
fermentation. When I visited the Mission Ridge Winery in
Westbank, British Columbia, where Okanagan brand
ciders are made, they acted as if it were a dirty secret.
Hornsby's, the best-selling cider in the U.S. and
another product of Gallo's California jug-wine empire, is
not really cider but a distilled malt beverage akin to Zima,
with apple flavoring and caramel color added.
Only four cideries west of the Rockies use fresh juice
for their cider. One, White Oak Cider, is located
west of Newberg in Yamhill County wine country. Cidermaker
Alan Foster first became interested in the beverage after
a trip to England in 1973. He tried major ciders such as
Strongbow and Gamers, then discovered farmhouse cider, made
in much the same way it has been for several hundred years.
"What distinguishes White Oak from other ciders are the
traditional European cider apples that we're using," says
Foster. "They're higher in tannins, which adds to dryness
and overall mouthfeel. Cider can only be as good as what
goes into it. Making it with dessert apples, as many producers
do, is like trying to make a pinot noir with Concord grapes."
There are four classes of cider apple: sweet, sharp and
bittersweet are blended to make White Oak Traditional English
Style Cider; bittersharp goes into Kingston Black, made
from the varietal of the same name. All White Oak ciders
are fermented in oak barrels and bottle-conditioned.
The Traditional has a dry, oaky aroma with some phenolic
notes; although it is a dry cider, there are fathoms of
depth to the flavor, the oak dryness giving way to rich
fruitiness and sweet honeysuckle notes as it warms up. The
Kingston Black has a sweet, honeylike nose, full fruity
body and clove notes from the apples.
Foster recently attended a course on cidermaking in France
and England with Ron Irvine of Irvine's Vintage Cider in
Washington. Foster's favorite thing about the trip was being
able to find "perry," traditional pear cider. He hopes to
release his own perry, made with traditional varieties of
pears, after the first of the year.
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