Sangfroid Apple Brandy 375ml
We’ve been called purists. We don’t think we are, but, if that label is going to be applied, it’s most appropriate for our wild apple brandy. No other expression better embodies our approach to fruit-growing and brandy-making than our wild apple brandy. Apples are one of the most genetically diverse species on the planet, and the idea that the handful of varieties available in your local grocery store represent the variety of flavors that apples can exhibit is almost offensive.
This brandy is our best effort to showcase that diversity. All the apples here are truly wild – grown from seed, unnamed, unsprayed, and, to borrow from Andy Brennan, uncultivated. It takes a tremendous amount of work to, first of all, identify trees that fit the bill. It mostly involves cruising around old mountain towns, hard-to-reach valleys, and farm homesteads, looking for apple trees growing along a fence line or on the edges of wooded lots. Untended trees grow differently than manicured orchard trees – they’re gnarly, crooked, and often a pain to get to. But damn, the payoff is worth it. Most of the apples in this brandy are bitter- and acidic-tasting, and you wouldn’t want to eat them fresh out of hand. And they’re the apples that make the best cider and brandy. We grind and press them, ferment naturally in used oak barrels, and distill the cider twice in our alembic-style pot still. Aged in toasted French oak, this is the purest expression of apple you can find, and there's no other distillery in the country making anything like this.
Fruit: mostly wild apples from seedling trees, and a bit of heirloom fruit grown on unsprayed trees (Stayman, Winesap, Hewe’s Crab, Black Twig, Myer’s Royal Limbertwig, Harrison, and some Kazakh/American hybrids)
This brandy is our best effort to showcase that diversity. All the apples here are truly wild – grown from seed, unnamed, unsprayed, and, to borrow from Andy Brennan, uncultivated. It takes a tremendous amount of work to, first of all, identify trees that fit the bill. It mostly involves cruising around old mountain towns, hard-to-reach valleys, and farm homesteads, looking for apple trees growing along a fence line or on the edges of wooded lots. Untended trees grow differently than manicured orchard trees – they’re gnarly, crooked, and often a pain to get to. But damn, the payoff is worth it. Most of the apples in this brandy are bitter- and acidic-tasting, and you wouldn’t want to eat them fresh out of hand. And they’re the apples that make the best cider and brandy. We grind and press them, ferment naturally in used oak barrels, and distill the cider twice in our alembic-style pot still. Aged in toasted French oak, this is the purest expression of apple you can find, and there's no other distillery in the country making anything like this.
Fruit: mostly wild apples from seedling trees, and a bit of heirloom fruit grown on unsprayed trees (Stayman, Winesap, Hewe’s Crab, Black Twig, Myer’s Royal Limbertwig, Harrison, and some Kazakh/American hybrids)
