Paul Donaldson calls cider-making a hobby but that doesn’t stop him growing his own orchard of apples to give his Scoundrels and Rogues label its own special flavours. And it certainly doesn’t get in the way of winning gongs at the New Zealand Cider Awards. He tells Cityscape what he has on the go for this summer.
Are you pleased with how your orchard is going? I got enough for a couple of test batches, to see what it is going to deliver, but it’s hundreds of litres rather than thousands. I only make 6,000 litres a year over five or six ciders. I’m one of the smallest producers at the awards. The ethos is to make a high-end boutique product rather than a volume product. The way I make cider it’s more like a wine – it spends 1½ years in the barrel. I’m bottling the 2017 vintage now. I put the juice from the orchard into the main Heavenly Corrupted label. The results were encouraging though. I liked all the flavours. In the orchard there are no two trees the same. Two-thirds of them are heritage and the other third are dessert or eating apples – that seems the best blend. I’m happy with the flavour. I left it sitting for eight months in a glass carboy. There’s been a good fruit set on the orchard this year so we should get a large amount this time.
Is the market for cider still growing in New Zealand? There’s certainly a greater awareness of cider. The fruit-infused types boosted the market but now there’s a bigger focus on traditional cider. The big players decided to do the sweeter, fruit-infused cider and there’s still a market for that. It’s like craft beer in that people are ready to try new ones, they’re more accepting of different ciders.
What’s next for you? Ice cider, made by freezing the concentrated juice. It’s like a dessert wine. I’ve just done pear for the first time. That’s quite novel, my pear ice cider was the only one at the awards. I put all six types in again at the awards and got six medals (three silver and three bronze). Peckham’s Cider in Nelson (whom Paul acknowledges as the gold standard to emulate in New Zealand cider – “They have a big range done well, still boutique”) dominated with 60 percent of the medals but there were only five or six entrants who got medals of any colour.