Eric Bordelet Poire Authentique

"It was Didier Dagueneau who convinced Eric Bordelet, former sommelier at Paris’s three-star Arpège restaurant, to develop a new, artisan style of cider, a natural product of character and thirst-quenching ability, which would also work with a wide range of different food. And so Eric refurbished his family’s ancestral orchards and ciderworks and would use his knowledge of viticulture to push for the highest level of quality.

The biodynamically farmed orchards – covering roughly nineteen hectares – are situated in southern Normandy where the Domfrontais extends between the boundaries of the Mayenne and the Orne. The land is composed of schists and sedimentary rocks dating back to the pre-Cambrian period three million years ago. The granite and broken schists form a complex soil and sub-soil that provides the foundation for the terrain.

With an Ecocert certification for organic farming and a scrupulous and scrumpy-tious attention to detail Eric Bordelet makes wonderful natural products that are far removed from the denatured, gassy drinks that masquerade under the cider label. His classic ciders can age for five to seven years, with the Granit and Argelette able to go to ten years to develop superb complexity of flavour. Bordelet says that the impression of sweetness improves with age, the same as with older wines.

Eric uses a process of selection, crushing, pressing and settling. The natural traditional fermentation takes place in vat or barrel and in bottle over weeks and months according to the amount of residual sugar in the respective cuvées and therefore without the addition of any sugar" -Supplier notes