When we started making ice cider in 2012 it was soon clear to us that we needed to have a two-pronged approach to starting and building the company. We knew we wanted to be a wine maker (using apples as raw material) to be reckoned with over time. One of the few things we knew about the wine business was that serious wines are driven by place. A good wine carries the sensory traits unique for the place it comes from.  

Where we were though, in the northern county of Västerbotten between the baltic seaboard and the inland forestlandscape, there were no orchards, no fruit that we could use that in a serious way could mirror our landscape in an icecider. We made a decision early on to develop ice cider as a product in Sweden and Europe while, at the same time, exploring whether it was possible to grow apples as far north as latitude 63.  

One product developing and producing business, a negociant, that purchased the raw material from the establishedapple orchards in the southern part of the country. One agriculture developing and farming business that established and ran orchards at an extreme latitude.  

Both approaches were met with extreme skepticism. Ice cider as a product was written off by almost everyone. ”It’s a fine product but we can’t work with it, because it will never sell any meaningful volumes.” responded one prominent distributor. ”Apple growing at your latitude will never be more than a brand exercise” said someone, a geneticist I think, from apple academia.

The distributor that said ”thank you but no” went bust a few years ago. Since 2014 we’ve established more than 10 hectares of apple orchards in northern Sweden.  

In 2020 we started harvesting slightly larger volumes from our largest trial orchard at Röbäcksdalen in Umeå while at the same time receiving fruit from the very first pilot established in 2014 and located even further north. When it dawned on us that we would be able to make ice cider from northern fruit much earlier than we had anticipated we decided to produce a number of vintages before releasing anything to give ourselves time to understand our fruit and what made it unique.  

After five vintages we are now ready to release the first ice cider from Brännland Iscider where the fruit in its entirety wasproduced in commercial orchards established in Västerbotten a decade ago. To us this is historic but perhaps it alsopaves the way in a larger perspective. This is the ice cider that couldn’t exist because its fruit comes from a landscape that couldn’t grow it. An ice cider that we hope will encourage more orchards as well as inject courage in others who wantto try the unthinkable, opening the possibility to look at northern Sweden as more than a landscape from which you canextract timber and electricity while those who live here are left with dwindling public resources and a dwindling hope thatthe entire country has a right to prosper. A battering ram if you will. Or at least the handle on one.  

However, all of those things, political and otherwise, are secondary. If this ice cider is going to work as intended it needsto be worth all this trouble, the time and effort spent. Put simply, it needs to be good enough. A true mirror of itslandscape, an extension, an evolution, on the ice cider we produce from southern fruit now. If we are to keep investing in larger orchards and ice cider production in a northern landscape the resultant ice cider must be good and be so in a unique way to boot. So is it?

We’ll let you be the judge but our response to that question is a resounding yes. Brännland Iscider LXIV Västerbotten 2021, named for the latitude where we work and grow, is the future of our ice cider. It keeps all the promises we’ve madeover the years when telling our story, wearing our hearts on our sleeves. It is the peak of nearly fifteen years of graft and its meaning to Brännland Ice Cider cannot be overstated. The ice cider we make from southern apples, one that we arevery proud of, will remain in our portfolio for the foreseeable future. It is warm, sunny and inviting. It balances equallysweetness and acidity. The ice cider from northern apples is more secretive, darker (a touch sharp?). The aciditydominates the sugar but is reined in by a much more pronounced presence of tannins.  

We’ve chosen not to barrel age this ice cider. It is fermented using wild yeast in steel tank and then straight to bottle. It has a very different balance between its internal components and, as a result, it needs more time on the bottle than ourother ice ciders. This also points to a maturity in how the wine must be allowed to develop before being released. We’veproud to have to come this far. To the beginning of the story.  

Brännland Iscider presents Brännland Iscider LXIV Västerbotten 2021. A field blend using around 50 apple varieties.  

‍

‍

Brännland Apple Ice 2024 is a classic in the sensethat it falls into what, after five vintages, is a familiar shape. An elegantsweet wine with a refreshing acidity made from 100% Mutsu apples that works aswell as a dessert and cheese wine as with food that needs acidity and sweetnessto balance the palate like pork shank, choucroute and grilled chicken with acream sauce. It is still ourhommage to the semi dry wines of the Mosel. A Swedish spätlese made from appleif you will. Enjoy.

‍

‍

Using the natural winter cold of Northern Sweden we concentrate apple juice from the best Swedish apples and ferment the sweet must into an ice wine, an ice cider, with equal parts fresh apple acidity and warm autumnal apple sweetness.

‍

Comments on the product

Andreas Sundgren, founder, Brännland Iscider,

This year’s ice cider is light and elegant, something that characterizes all the wines in the vintage regardless of label. The fermentations, that were carried through entirely using wild yeast, were strong and fast which to some extent changes the finished wine adding width, especially on the palate.  

‍

‍

This year’s barrel aged ice cider has a lighter barrel signature than in the past, in keeping with the switch to using only large oak barrels.  

The result is a more drinkable ice cider without compromising what differentiates it from our other wines.  

The barrel aged ice cider is still the best wine from Brännland Iscider for meditation and contemplation but, for this vintage, combines the magic of Stockinger barrels with a more elegant touch. The finished wine straddles a wider range than usual.  

‍

‍

‍

We’ve found a form that we like now. So, this year’s Ember is in a style similar to last year’s but perhaps with a slighlty more pronounced sweetness in spite of the same residual sugar. We’ve worked from a good ice cider, partly barrel aged and complemented with glühwein-distillate carrying cinnamon, orange and lemon peel, cloves and cardamom. As alwys Ember is fortified a touch using apple distillate distilled fromn our ice cider at Tevsjö distillery. Elegant but accessible. Enjoy warm or cold or as part of a cocktail.

‍

This year the barrel aged ice cider from Brännland Iscider switches name and becomes Essence. The change is part of our work to renew and clarify our labels.  

Andreas Sundgren, founder Brännland Iscider

• When we started barrel ageing in 2013 we just wanted to find out whether ice cider actually could be barrel aged for longer periods of time. Since then we’ve gone from two 225 liter barrique’s in the shower room, via used Burgundy and Sauternes barrels, to the current set-up using only 500 liter Stockinger barrels.  

• Essence is a clarification in several ways. The barrel aged ice cider has always been those ice ciders in a vintage with the greatest presence and weight, very often sensorically concentrated, but the barrel ageing also deepens and concentrates the expression of the ice cider.  

• The bigger barrels gives us softer barrel notes and often require longer ageing. We use mostly used barrels which imparts slow oxidation rather than woody notes and so Essence combines the magic of Stockinger barrels with something more elegant, binding Essence more clearly to our other non barrel aged bottlings while still retaining the barrel character.  

‍

‍

‍

‍

The trees at Axelstorp were planted just after the Second World War and the orchard is currently owned and operated by Magnus Nilsson. Under his stewardship Axelstorp has focused exclusively on fruit for fine cider production by consciously lowering the production output of the orchard. This yields smaller harvests but concentrates the sugars and aromas of the fruit significantly. The philosophy of the orchard is mirrored in Brännland Iscider Axelstorp. Containing equal parts Aroma and Ingrid Marie carrying the body and sweetness characteristic of the apples from Axelstorp we’ve used the natural winter cold of our landscape to reach even higher concentration. The finishes ice cider balances extraordinary depth with the characteristic singing acidity of northern apples.  

A little over 800 bottles produced. An ice cider for the ages.  

‍

Comments on Brännland Iscider Barrique 2018 by cider maker Andreas Sundgren:

Every year Brännland Iscider sets apart some of its ice cider for barrel ageing. 12 months on a barrel softens and integrates the high acidity and fresh apples notes with the natural residual sugar to create a deeper, more complex ice cider, darker both in colour as well as on the palate.

“The 2018 is curious in that an usually large part of it was shaped more by its ageing than we are otherwise used to. When we barrelled it in 2019 it was fairly low in alcohol and had a higher degree of residual sugar. Then in the spring of 2020 a fair amount of it started fermenting slowly again and we decided to roll with it rather than try and stop anything. What came out the other end was higher in alcohol than expected but also with a closer balance between acidity and residual sugar than we had first envisioned. It seems the ice cider “wanted” to move to that point on its own and we are happy it did. In the bottle this spells a tighter final wine. It will be interesting to see how it handles further ageing in bottle”.

‍

‍