I need to listen to John more often.
Frequently he will become obsessed with an idea, or place, or food and two or 10 yeas later I’m reading about the same topic in the news.
An example of this phenomenon is cider.
About 10 years ago John started talking about cider more often than normal. When we lived in Oregon the conversation would come up in the Fall when the apples in Oregon didn’t come close to comparing to his beloved Macoun and numerous other varieties from New England and the cider available was too sweet and simple “it’s like Coke made with apples.” When we moved to Italy, the variety options receded even more to the point that he started planning trips to Brittany, not a small feat considering it was a 13 hour drive from our home in Northern Italy. But this time it wasn’t for eating apples, John became obsessed with the apples they used to make Cider.
The first trip we stopped at some decent Cidrerie open to the public, filling our car with boxes of sec, demi-sec cider as well as a bottle or two of Lambig for the coming winter. As often happens the path of discovery brought us from one producer to another. At Paul Coic we were lucky enough to be there on the same day they organized a local farmers market along with food and music. The market was as much a pot luck as a farmers market, many producers and farmers traded their products and families came not only to buy vegetables, but also to fill their coolers with prepared food and meat for the coming week. It was a communal party that existed to create connection, conversation and cross pollination of production.
After spending some time with Paul and Marie in their neatly managed orchards and Cidrerie, they were kind enough to give us the names of a few other small artisanal producers the Corniuaille region.
These images are from the harvest at Cidrerie Melenig.
Two Christians, Christian Toullec and Christian Saccardy work together to create magnificent BIO (organic) ciders using ancient wooden presses. The apples are harvested from the ground, which requires tremendous attention to keep the fruit away from a few wild goats that consider the orchard their home.
When we asked them about how the two Christians became partners they told us their story that only reinforced the theme that we found repeated throughout Brittany, which seems to be a world unto it’s own and that is – community.
Their story is one of an unlikely partnership between two men sharing the same first name. In 2005, Christian Saccardy had been running the cidrerie alone became sick and was unable to do the work necessary to run facility. When he advertised the business to sell in the local newspaper, Christian Toullec responded, he was interested in changing his life and was interested in starting to make Cider. When they met along with their wives, they came up with a solution that would benefit them both, they could become partners in the business and create something they both could enjoy and be proud of.
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