Roadcider 2023: Southern Highlands

The second cuvee for 2023 in our ongoing Roadcider project with friend and fermentation guru Lucien Alperstein, this is a dry, sparkling cider made from wild roadside apples, crabapples, quinces and servicetree fruit. 

2023 was a good year for roadside apples. The Gundungurra Southern Highlands release is a true roadcider, with 100% of the fruit from feral roadside apple (+ quince + servicetree) trees. We picked and pressed almost two tonnes of fruit from over 50 trees in beautiful autumn weather for this release. 

Fruit varied a lot this year, as is always the case. We had apples ranging from double-fist-size green bursting with zippy acid, donut-shaped sunset-blush apple lollies, brown russeted rough-skinned mid-sized fruit that tasted like baked apples, to 5-cent-piece sized perfectly round yellow-flesh crab apples so tannic you need a lot of water immediately after otherwise you’ll choke.

We had two main picks of fruit about 2 weeks apart and let all of the apples "sweat" (leaving the apples for a few more weeks after picking to allow the fruit starches to convert to sugar) before crushing and juicing.

Fermentation kicked off quickly as we used a pie-de-cuvee (wild yeast starter, this year from a glug of just-kicked-off Riesling juice from longtime friend of Roadcider Mem at Meredith Wines). Herbaceous and floral aromas shine from the quince, and fine tannins from the servicetree (sorbus) fruit do some heavy lifting despite their combined total of about 5% of the total fruit. It's more pet nat than conventional cider and it'd make sense for it to be on wine lists alongside other frothy whites. It's also worth tasting with the Orange Roadcider release from 100% orchard-grown cider variety fruit - some similarities but they're totally different ciders.

180 bottles available online - limit 6 per person.

FOR FULL PRODUCTION AND TASTING NOTES, PLEASE SEE OUR CORRESPONDING BLOG POST.