Piquenique Quince 2021
"Apples plus quince from Sandy Point Farm, an 1890s historic farmstead on Waldron Island
In 2019, we moved to the San Juan Islands in Washington along the Canadian border to explore what the world of farming and viticulture had to offer outside our familiar world of Sonoma and Northern California. We settled here with the intention of (eventually) buying land on which to plant orchards, vines, and gardens, and in the meantime we have set up a small winery in which last year we produced 700 cases of sparkling wines from purchased, local, organic/non-sprayed apples, grapes, pears, plums, quince, blackberries and medlar. I am slowly posting bits of information and photos over at @piquenique.wine on instagram about the historical farmsteads and orchards we have had the pleasure to get to know over the past year or so
The fruit has been picked and processed by us, with help from my cousin Annie (fruit she picked that my uncle grew is featured in the “Cuvee Annie”) and our intern and hopeful future employee, Audrey. Everything was processed and produced without additions, and bottled as a pet nat: no added sugars, yeasts, oak or sulfites at any time ever. Everything was fermented and aged in glass or stainless steel, and nothing was or will be disgorged.
Our goal was to capture freshness of fruit, and to feature the broad array of apple-y-ness from the different farms and orchards we worked with. Rather than focus on a particular variety of apple, we chose to try to capture what each combination of trees during any particular week was offering. People have been planting apple trees for almost a hundred and fifty years on these islands, and the fruit ripens anywhere from August to January. Each variety and time of harvest offered us something different to explore, and we chose to embrace this diversity with 29 different bottlings."