Cyril Zangs This Side Up (2019)

REGION: Calvados, FR
SIZE: 750ml / ABV: 7.0%

Cider apples coming from a single orchard, overlooking the sea, in the Calvados department. Nine varieties are used in its composition. The fruit has a special taste, and as a result is made into seperate cider. Racy, taut, mineral. Very wine like!

After a career as a book sales rep in Paris, Cyril decided to go back to native Normandy with his family. Zangs’s orchard in Glos, Normandy, overlooks the North Sea. It contains 69 varieties of apple tree, grown without intrusive chemical treatments, all between about 15 and 60 years old. These varieties are measured by sweetness: sweet, bittersweet, bitter, sour and tart. Only the best apples are picked, by hand, with up to 10 per cent not making it further than the orchard. This takes place in early October to mid-December. After picking, they are left to ripen for up to six weeks, and carefully cleaned so as not to remove the indigenous yeast on their skins, which is the key to their fermentation. After pressing and the first stage of fermentation, they are bottled and stocked horizontally, and turned by hand regularly for up to three months. All this is done without adding sulphites or additional yeast, and without filtering. For those of us with self-control, these ciders can be kept in a cellar for several years.