Ice cider

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007)

Ice Cider, (French “cidre de glace”), is the cider equivalent of ice wine. There are two main approaches to producing ice cider: cryoconcentration and cryoextraction. Cryoconcentration involves harvesting the fruits late in season and leaving them in fresh storage until late December, when they are pressed and the fresh juice is left to freeze naturally. In January, the concentrated juice begins the process of cold fermentation. Cryoextraction is similar to the method used to produce icewine: apples are left on the trees, at the mercy of the weather, until the end of January. They are picked when the temperature hovers around -8°C to -15°C, and then pressed and left to cold ferment for months.

The first claim to commercial ice cider was produced in 1990 in Dunham, a small town in Quebec just north of the Vermont border, by Christian Barthomeuf, a pioneer of Quebec’s small wine industry. Cidre de glace first became available in stores in 1996. Today it is widely distributed by Quebec’s government-run chain of liquor stores, the Société des alcools du Québec, where it accounts for about 70% of all sales of Quebec products.^[1] There are about fifty producers. Most are of very small size, attracted in part by the very low capital costs required to enter the business.