CIDER
Mt. Hood Organic Farms, in collaboration with Hiyu Wine Farm, is now making a European-style, traditional method cider, made with biodynamically grown fruit, under the label of Floréal.
Our first cider was pressed in 2014 and included 12 varieties of heirloom and cider apples. Our later vintages contain up to 62 varieties. The cider ferments naturally and ages for a year in barrel. It is bottled with fresh juice from the next year’s pressing to induce a secondary fermentation in the bottle. Nothing else is added to our cider—no sulfites, no sugar, no yeast. It is dry, complex and evokes the essence of the apples, our land and its relationship to Mt. Hood. The glacial river that flows through the farm gives it a particular minerality.
We continue to transform our orchard and to graft and make our own trees and now have 62 cider specific apples and crab apples, with a total of over 69 varieties of apples and 20 pears, including 8 varieties of perry pears on 60 acres of orchard and 200 acres of land, all USDA Certified Organic and Demeter Certified Biodynamic. Our cider will change as our young trees mature and the blend includes an ever greater diversity of the American, French and English sharps, bittersharps and bittersweets, as well as quince, crab apples, pears and other co-ferments under the bottle labels Nivôse and Germinal. A true perry is also on the horizon.
It is also sold at these fine wine establishments in Portland:
Ardor
World Foods
Someday
The Place
West Coast Provisions
Pairings
Lazy Susan
Flor
Outside the Northwest, our distributor is Jenny & Francois in NY City.
