Cidermakers and Orchardists
Our cider company was started in 2017 with us (Sara & Gary) planting a cider apple orchard in Prince Edward County. We had moved our family from the UK (via 5 years in USA) with the intention of setting up a cidery to create the traditional, dry cider we enjoyed drinking in Europe.
Our ambition is to introduce Ontario to dry ciders made using traditional cider apples full of tannins and flavour profiles often associated with wine.
We have planted over 10 acres of apple trees (3300+ trees!) that have been selected over the centuries in both Europe and North America to ferment a cider with tannins and complexity. Every single tree has been planted by our hands in our field in Hillier. We may have lost a few along the way… but we’re calling that experience.
Our Cider
Loch Mor Cider blends contain carefully selected heritage and cider varieties, which are pressed on site and fermented slowly at low temperatures. Many of our ciders are bottle conditioned, creating the natural, fine stream of bubbles. Some are fermented naturally with wild/house culture yeast & others are inoculated with strains of wine yeast.
We like our cider full of flavour and not full of sugar. We leave our cider “full juice”, which means we can provide you with a drier (lower sugar) cider with the full flavour for you to enjoy.
Cider judges also agree – our ciders have won awards for two years in a row, including for our fortified cider, Pommeau, which has won twice. (we were the first to produce this traditional style of cider in Ontario, and we think the second in Canada).
Cider is wine made with apples & our cider is true to that heritage. It pairs beautifully with a meal.
As one of only three Canadian Certified Pommeliers, ask Sara for suggestions on a food pairing for your cider when you’re next visiting the cidery.
Our Gnarly Apples
The apples we grow are gnarly. They are often small, knobbly and some even have the texture of sandpaper (aka russeting). We don’t manage our trees for the appearance of the apples (because we don’t need to).
The soil in our orchard is shallow and stony (18-36”) on fragmented limestone bedrock, known as Hillier clay loam. Our trees have to work to get their moisture & our apples tend to have a high sugar content, which concentrates the flavours in the juice.
Cider apples can be classified into a few broad categories related to tannin content, acidity level and other elements, which helps us, as cidermakers, think about how we can blend them. Within each of those categories, there is still a wide range of flavour profiles – we learn more about this every harvest as more of our trees start to come into production.