Name: Cranberry Orange Blossom
Brand: Potter's Craft Cider
Availability: InStock

Every Potter's Craft Cider newsletter opens with the same line: zero sugar cider made in Charlottesville, VA. On most of the cidery's releases that reads as a statement of house style. On Cranberry Orange Blossom it is closer to a design constraint.

The cider is back on draft and in cans this week. It is made from Jonagold apples fermented on cranberries and orange blossoms, and it finishes at 5.5 percent. The cranberries, Potter's says, "add bright acidity and a tannic quality that is complemented by the citrus notes from the orange blossoms."

The word doing the quiet work there is tannic. Jonagold is a dessert apple, a cross of Golden Delicious and Jonathan bred for the fruit bowl rather than the press, and like most eating apples it brings sugar and acid without a great deal of tannin behind them. Tannin is what gives a cider grip and structure, and the traditional route to it is bittersweet cider apples that nobody would want to bite into. Potter's has gone a different way and let the cranberries supply it. Fermenting on the fruit rather than blending juice in afterward puts the skins in the vessel while the yeast is working, which is where that structure comes from.

Then there is the sugar, or rather the absence of it. Residual sweetness is the standard tool for making an aggressively tart fruit easy to drink, and there is none here to round anything off. The acidity and the tannin arrive as they are, with the orange blossom sitting on top of them.

That combination makes it a genuinely useful bottle for the season ahead. A dry, tannic, cranberry-forward cider would sit well next to roast pork or a sharp cheddar, and it lands close enough to the Thanksgiving table to turn up a couple of months early without seeming lost.

Cranberry Orange Blossom is pouring now on draft and in 12 ounce cans at the Charlottesville tasting room. Potter's is marking the return on Saturday with stickers, specials and a set from Baby Jo's Boogie Band.

Editor’s Take

The citrus in this cider is not coming from oranges. It is coming from orange blossoms, which is a different proposition entirely: the flower rather than the fruit, contributing an aroma that reads as citrus without any actual citrus having turned up to do the job. It is the same sleight of hand that makes orange blossom water taste as though it ought to be sweet when it is nothing of the sort.

So count what is happening in the glass. The cranberries are handling the sour and the grip. The Jonagolds are handling the apple. A flower is handling the citrus. And Potter's has removed every last gram of sugar from the finished article, which means none of it gets softened on the way out. Whoever decided this cider needed a floral counterweight rather than a spoonful of sweetness picked the harder answer, and I would like to shake their hand.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Cranberry Orange Blossom Gets Its Tannin From the Cranberries

Potter's ferments Jonagold apples directly on cranberries and orange blossoms, and the fruit ends up doing structural work the apples cannot. Zero sugar, 5.5 percent, and nothing sweet standing in front of the acidity.

Source & Editorial