[Andy and Polly Brennan]

Hello all (from the newly re-zoned 7a Catskills,)

I hope to continue the archived discussion on the new website.
Looking at older posts concerning apples for cider, particularly wild apples, I hear too much emphasis on variety. WAAAAAY too much.

It’s about Nature AND Nurture. In fact, I’d go so far as to say over 50% of the quality comes from how the tree is growing. In terms of the immeasurables, I’ve always found wild apples to beat farmed apples and I’m convinced that Macs on abandoned 150-year-old trees are more soulful and useful to a cidermaker than a bin of English bittersweets grown hydroponically (aka, Bud9). It’s about expression, bush-orchards are bush-league.

If I hear one more word about Yarlington Mill!
Come on artists, where are you? Are we going to let commercial interests take over cider? Get your head out of the Man’s-in-control mindset and discover how great cider (interesting cider) is made by the forces of Nature, not by hipster wine-makers, not gene-slicing lab rats or nurserymen, not by efficiency-minded farmers. And it’s DEFINETELY

not made by our expectations!!!

If you just want a value-added product, then alright, call Scott Labs and stay off the HOLISTIC orchard website, but if you want to talk about the ART of cider, YOU’RE LOOKING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!
What does the tree want to express? And how can you step aside and let it speak?
(Hint, it happens in the soil)

Andy Brennan
The guy who wrote Uncultivated