The changing weather is making life difficult for Montérégie ice cider producers, some of whom are giving up production of this emblematic Quebec alcohol this winter.
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“We’re not doing any this year, it’s as simple as that. The temperature is too disgusting,” says François Pouliot, owner of the Cidrerie Verger Hemmingford, formerly La Face hidden de la pomme.
After the warm weather of December, the harvest of frozen apples will not take place as usual in January.
Photo Agence QMI, Mario Beauregard
“When it’s this mild, at a given moment, the apples start to ferment in the tree, they are no longer good,” explains the man who was one of the first producers of ice cider in Quebec, ago over 25 years old.
Two methods
There are two ways to produce this local Quebec alcohol. Cryo-extraction involves pressing frozen apples harvested from the tree and cryoconcentration involves letting the must freeze in bins outside.
“Cryo-extraction is unthinkable this year. We want to press at a temperature of minus 10 or minus 12 degrees, but the fruit must have held up to that point,” explains Hugo Poliquin, owner of the Cryo cider factory in Saint-Hilaire.
“Once the fruit has frozen, it is sensitive to thawing. He’s going to fall,” adds the one who is on his 17the season.
Photo Agence QMI, Mario Beauregard
This year, he also gave up on cryoconcentration, due to a season that started badly, with the cold weather in spring. The flowers on the trees froze, decreasing his apple production by almost 60%.
As for him, François Pouliot fears that there will not be enough consecutive days of frost in January to freeze the juice in bins outside.
Hope
At Domaine Labranche, in Saint-Isidore-de-la-Prairie, we are hopeful that the temperature will be favorable for cryoconcentration.
“We let the must freeze in the tanks from December, but the concentration really takes place from mid-January,” explains owner Louis Desgroseillers.
He agrees, however, that the weather is less and less conducive to freezing fruit on the tree.
Hugo Poliquin goes so far as to say that this method could become “folkloric”, with our increasingly mild winters.
“In recent years, we have succeeded one year out of four, it has made it very difficult,” he says.
He mentions that the future of production is perhaps in the regions further north of the river, near the capital, for example.