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The Williams family has been farming apples and stone fruit on Colorado’s Western slope for more than 100 years, and today their Snow Capped Cider is one of the winningest American cideries, notching big honors at GLINTCAP, the world’s premier cider competition, while cleaning up again at the annual Cidercraft awards. The secret, says owner, creative force, and cidermaker Kari Williams, is the quality of their fruit.
Growing apples for cider on their own estate isn’t novel, but doing so at an elevation of more than 6,000 feet certainly is, and the extreme growing conditions produce apples with more vivid contours as well as more sugar, which provides Williams a saturated palette with which to paint.
In this episode, Williams discusses:
- the multigenerational family approach to farming and now cidermaking
- the benefits and challenges of growing apples at high elevation
- maintaining tight farming control for perfect apples, while benefitting from the luxury of time
- an apple-driven creative process inspired by flavors in that year’s crop
- terroir and flavor expression in apples, and the impact of different farming locations
- extensive trialing with 200 fermentation tests in any given year
- building a perception of sweetness in dry ciders
- aging certain apple varieties before juicing
- balancing acidity, astringency, and sweetness in fine ciders
And more.
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