Eric Bordelet Sidre Brut Tendre NV
Background
We’re continuing a little bit of a VQ Sparkling Pack tradition and for the second time in 2 years, we’re featuring a beautiful sparkling apple cider. Last year we showed you Coat Albret from Brittany, a funky, broody, barn-yardy cider. This year we’re going in the exact opposite direction and going with the precise, refined flavours of Eric Bordelet from Normandy.
In our Toronto social circle of wine nerds, we all get super excited every December when these ciders become available. Eric’s wines are the perfect example of what happens when you combine hundreds of years of tradition with state of the art modern winemaking.
The family apple and pear orchards that Eric took over in the early 1990s were relics of the past. This part of France is too cold to grow grapes for wine, so historically every family farm would make a low alcohol cider that would be consumed as a safe alternative to the water at the time. Over the years, hundreds of different apple and pear varieties were isolated and bred for different purposes. There are certain apples that are sweeter, more bitter, higher in acid, have thicker skins etc.
Beyond breeding apples for different flavours, apples were bred to be available at different times of year. The apples and pears in the Bordelet orchards are harvested multiple times, beginning at the end of August and continuing all the way into December. Historically, this ensured that there was always fruit to eat and cider to drink. Today these multiple harvests help the final product have a deep nuanced flavour, because it’s not only a mix of different kinds of fruit, but it’s also a mix of different ages of fermentation. Cool stuff for sure.
Food Pairing
Apple flavours are traditionally a winner with big holiday dinners. Turkey with stuffing, latkes with applesauce, porchetta with fennel. There are so many things that we would like to eat with this cider. But more than any of that, apple flavours make a great pairing for baking spices like cinnamon (duh!), star anise, nutmeg… all those beautiful flavours. Bordelet ciders are like the Champagnes of cider. They are great with food, but also infinitely enjoyable by themselves as an aperitif.
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