Cider, Fruit wine and Vinegar course

I must apologise for neglecting this blog yet again, but life tends to get in the way of me typing up blog entries.

A week ago I attended a great course held by Eldrimner, a resource centre for artisanal food production in north Sweden on commercial cider, fruit wine and vinegar making. It was a 3 day course taught by Guillaume André, a fantastic teacher from an agricultural teaching centre in Florac, France. Despite being translated by a somewhat lack-luster translator the course was a success. I am also very grateful for having studied basic french at university. Guillaume is incredibly knowledgeable on the french techniques for creating cider, fruit wines and vinegars and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to take the course.

Here are a few photos from the course. 🙂

Apple Wine

Guillaume washes the fruit, and the crushes it for making apple wine

Juice of macerated black currants which had rested overnight.

Learning to test the TA (titratable acidity) of a black currant vinegar

Here is a interesting video of a vinegar producer in France, you can see how they store their vinegar as well as how they infuse the vinegar with flavour. ( It looks like a round cloth ball that is hung just above the liquid, and in the summer heat the vinegar steam infuses with the herbs/flavours in the fabric.

Whilst this is mostly just a dream right now , I hope to be able to use this knowledge in a commercial enterprise sometime in the future.