The Scent of Spanish Apples

On some days, all of Taramundi is deeply, pervasively scented with apples.  Although there are apple orchards everywhere, all of the apples growing on trees or even the few that have fallen off and started to rot can’t account for the pungency that seems to blow across the countryside. 

I discovered that at the end of town, at the bottom of the hill, beside a small, picturesque restaurant made of stone and covered in vines with fat, blue hydrangeas crowding the edges, is a full-scale sidra-bottling factory.   I wrote earlier that Spanish sidra is an acquired taste, but now that I’ve tried it directly from a giant vat and patted the ponies that graze under the bending, fruit-laden trees that produce the apples for the sidra, I have a brand-new appreciation for its subtle sparkle and mutely tart finish.

José Lombardero (whose brother was the former owner of our house) is a tall, bald man with penetrating brown eyes. His other brother owns the restaurant next door to the Solleiro factory, José’s orchards are directly behind it, and he and his family live close by.  About 20% of the apples come from his own trees, and his neighbors from all over Taramundi pick the rest during October and November.  After sorting (by hand) and washing (by machine), the apples are immediately flattened in two enormous steel presses (the largest one holds 15,000 kilos of apples), while the juice runs to the lower level through a series of hoses in the floor. The apples are pressed over and over until every last bit of juice has been extracted, in a process that takes more than two days per batch.  The hoses are connected to a series of eleven or twelve enormous green tanks with black steel catwalks above them, and after about a month, the juice loses its sweetness and begins to bubble with fermentation.  After another month, it becomes proper sidra, and then the mixing begins.

Each tank has different levels of sweetness and strength and so they’re combined carefully to create a consistent flavor.  A lot of tasting goes on to achieve this, and since bottling is slow in the winter, after the frantic pace of the fall, I imagine this is one of the loveliest times to be a sidra-maker.  Bottling will pick up in the spring, and right now, in July and August (high season in the area), the factory runs at full throttle, with four extra employees and little time for leisure.

And so when the wind is right, the whole mountainside is perfumed with apples, the apples that are everywhere, and the apples that provide yet another small industry to keep the town humming.  Instead of looking beyond home and toward larger, urban areas for inspiration, the people of Taramundi have instead found what they need to survive and thrive in the traditional occupations--updated and modernized--that enabled their grandparents to scrape a living from the almost vertical landscape.

Comments

[Ann]

I can smell the apples now and am transported back to late summers as a child in Vermont running through the apple orchard ...

[ann]

Oh my. Will you send me one of the ponies by airmail? I'm sure they'd like living in the backyard of a Brooklyn brownstone, right? if not, some sidra would be okay too. I've never heard of it, but I think I'd like it.

[veron]

I am so ready for the apple season to begin. This oppressive heat here in Richmond has me dreaming of the fall.

[Marce]

Taramundi sounds and looks totally dreamy. I haven´t been to Spain yet even though my brother lives there, but after watching a miniseries called "Vientos de agua" about Austurian-Argentine immigration in a family over a century, I fell in love with the Austurian landscape, it´s truly breathtaking.

[Deborah Dowd]

This sounds wonderful, but I show my ignorance- is sidra an apple wine or more like a hard cider-type drink?

[Brandon]

Sidra is hard cider--stronger than beer but not so strong as wine.