Wine is made by fermenting grapes or other fruit, although apple and pear wines are distinctive enough to have earned their own categories, cider and perry.
But a growing number of producers are blurring the styles, blending grape wines and ciders or fermenting grapes and other fruit together, with remarkable delicious results.
Some bottles are collaborations between wine and cider specialists, but most who are making these blends are natural winemakers, who tend to be more experimental and adventurous and less bound by industry and market conventions.
Andy Brennan, of the superb Aaron Burr Cidery in Wurtsboro, N.Y., makes a wonderfully refreshing blend he calls Appinette by fermenting together farmed apples and traminette, a hybrid wine grape.
Scar of the Sea, an excellent wine producer in San Luis Obispo, Calif., blends a different grape with Newtown Pippin apples each year — gamay in 2021 and palomino in ’22.
Persons:
Andy Brennan, Aaron Burr Cidery, Newtown Pippin, gamay, palomino
Organizations:
Calif, Newtown
Locations:
Wurtsboro, San Luis Obispo, ’