What do you get when you mix a world-weary traveller with a fresh young winemaker? You get cider, the freshest, tastiest cider on the Australian market. One night in Bowral Graeme Doyle said to his long-term friend Jeff Aston, “Jeff make me a cider” – and the result has been taking Sydney by storm. We interview Jeff about the inspirations behind cider and the reasons for its very sudden success …
Fresh: Jeff, what inspired you to decide to come up with a cider as opposed to your wine making background? Was it a trend thing that you saw in the market or was it a love of cider that you had?
Jeff: I guess Graeme always loved cider and pestered me for long enough. He just suggested it, and I was doing another cider at the time. It evolved from there. We came up with the concept and some blends and we were all happy with it. We decided to take it to the next level and started producing it.
Fresh: Was Graeme the sort of guy who he would literally rather drink cider than wine if you came over, all that sort of thing? He’s like a family friend, isn’t he? That’s his thing?
Jeff: Yeah. He likes cider. What’s he say? He always says that he drinks red wine it makes him like an Indonesian stick puppet so he drinks cider instead.
Fresh: What did he mean by that?
Jeff: I don’t know. I haven’t worked that out yet. I haven’t given him enough wine to find out!
Fresh: Was there some sort of process you had to go through where you started to mix apples together? Was he there to taste test them? Is that how that went?
Jeff: Yeah, because we were already producing a bit of cider, and in our producing we keep our varieties separate and then come up with a blend at the end. Because we already had product in the winery that were different varietals – Pink Lady, Gala, Galaxy, Red Delicious.
Fresh: Talking about the types of apples that you had in mind. So what is the actual apple blend that you have in Dcider?
Jeff: About 50% Pink Lady, and that’s quite a crisp, aromatic-style of apple. It gives it that lift, and that real fresh apple character. I’ve done some straight Pink Ladies, and they’re a bit, a little bit thin on the palate. I like a nice aromatic, but a bit thin on the palate. So then we played around with some blends of Gala, Galaxy and Red Delicious, and it’s probably about even portions of those three. And it just…the blend of those three seemed to give it a bit more creaminess and roundness in the palate, and then a bit more length, as well, so you still get that nice, fresh apple, but then you get the creaminess and the length, it goes right through the palate. So, it’s sort of put together like a wine blend, I guess, where we’re trying to have all the senses in the mouth, rather than
just making a pure varietal, for the hell of making a pure varietal. I’m more interested in actually making a really nice, approachable product.
Fresh: What I like about it, it is quite a natural kind of taste. You can taste nature in it. You’d almost want to use the word organic, but the problem is, then organic has a different meaning again. But it’s got that… it’s almost like a pungency, and a length across the palate, that is a lot better, because I have to say, some of the ciders on the market, you get the syrupy ones which give cider a bad name, and then, unfortunately, you get some hat are a little thin on the flavour, in a way.
Jeff: Yeah, that’s right. And, I think that’s partially because of the processes they use, because we do approach it from a wine making, sort of mindset, where we really want the final product to represent the fruit that it begins with. You know, the French talk about in wine making, they talk about terroir. They say that you can taste the vineyard, and you can taste the people in the vineyard, and it’s no different for any piece of fruit. You can really taste the Batlow apples, a really specific nice, crisp, cool climate, snow mountain apples, and that’s why we use those in the cider. I think, coming from that mindset where we’re really trying to represent that. You make it a lot differently, and your things that are important to you in the wine making process – or cider making process, a big difference where if you’re just trying to make a cider.
Fresh: Well, was there a point in the experimentation where you started to think, ‘We’re on the right track’, and so you kept going with it? Was there a certain point where you said ‘That’s it, this is great’, and started passing it around for people to try out?
Jeff: No, you always, constantly think you could do something a bit different, a bit better. I think that’s the nature of neurotic winemakers and cider-makers, is that they are always, ‘Oh, we could try this, and we could do that’, and so, it’s a constant evolution of it. As the product goes on, and to be honest, I think that it works well like that. Because I find that, people drinking it usually, their taste buds are evolving, as well, and so, that sort of evolution of the product in its natural progression suits the way people want something more as they go along, so it works quite well.
Fresh: Do you find that there was a particular sector of people who leaned towards it, like they’ve got a history of drinking certain things, and something suits them, or is it just really broad?
Jeff: Real, surprisingly, broad. The biggest thing we noticed was, the number of ‘absolute definitely don’t drink cider’ drinkers, that actually bought cases of cider, when they could have bought wine, for example. Sometimes they came up and said, ‘No, no, I don’t want to try to drink cider.’ We’d convince them to at least try it, and then they ended up walking away with a case of cider, it was amazing.
Fresh: Yeah, I must admit, I did see that myself, a number of times, where people were really…There is a strong resistance, and I must admit, I probably didn’t drink any cider for years because whatever I’d tried in the past never hit the spot. So, it was quite amazing to find a drink that suits so many occasions. The other thing about Dcider is, it’s not the sort of drink that you feel overly drunk on, as well, you can drink it in a relaxed sort of way. It doesn’t affect you in the same way that wine or a champagne does … like, champagne makes me really giddy very fast. But Dcider’s a very pleasant, easy drink.
Jeff: It’s a very fresh product. A lot of, and not all ciders are like this, but we only use fresh apples from Batlow. With apples that have even been in the cold store for a couple months.
Fresh: Do you think it suits a particular time of day or type of food or are there things like that, that Dcider can slot in really well with people?
Jeff: I guess, yeah, there probably is, but that’s probably more of a personal thing. We’ve started doing some matches with some meals like pork and things like that, and it goes with… As you would expect, the apple cider does go well with that sort of thing. Someone actually emailed us a recipe for risotto that they made with apple cider, and said it’s one of the best risottos they had!
For more on Dcider go to www.dcider.com.au
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