A fittingly amber-coloured wall of ciders on display at La Face Cachée de la Pomme's modern boutique. (Giancarlo La Giorgia)

From Quebec's first wine-loving French settlers to its present-day habitants, industrious vintners have persistently tried to coax a worthy vintage out of this province's frigid terroir, usually with unmemorable results.

It took the popularization of icewine elsewhere in Canada for winemakers to realize that Quebec's harsh climate might be a blessing in disguise, and local viticulture shifted toward icewine making in the 1980s. The industry has grown apace and improved considerably in quality, but output is still only a fraction of Ontario's Niagara and British Columbia's Okanagan regions, which are more suited to grape growing.

In 1989, a frustrated Christian Barthomeuf, the French emigré who had pioneered icewine making in Quebec, struck upon a novel idea: using the same techniques, he substituted the temperamental grape with a hardier, already ubiquitous fruit — namely, the apple.

It was the birth of ice cider, also known as apple icewine, a distinctly Québécois beverage that is slowly becoming the toast of wine connoisseurs and prestigious international competitions around the globe.

"When I first tasted Christian's cidre de glace [ice cider], I knew it would be a world-class product," says François Pouliot, founder of La Face Cachée de la Pomme, which in 1994 became the first producer of Barthomeuf's unique creation.

All the neighbouring Hemmingford apple farmers have harvested their crop, but Poulliot's orchard will remain fruit ladden into the early weeks of winter so that the fruit can be used for his specialty wines. (Giancarlo La Giorgia)

Technically, ice cider is the more apt description of this cool, unmistakably apple-based drink, and generally, it is marketed as such. However, with its limpid gold-to-amber colour, creamy texture, refreshing, complex palate and alcohol content around 12 per cent, most in the industry — and indeed, many wine reviewers — would argue that the beverage it most closely resembles is true ice wine. It's a far cry from either the opaque brown juice or beer-like alcoholic drink we associate with cider, and certainly nothing like its poor freeze-distilled cousin, applejack.

When asked to describe his product, Pouliot uses more poetic terms: "To me, it's a taste of Quebec in a bottle — warm apple pie and cold winter all in one."

It was this idea of capturing the essence of Quebec that spurred him to get into ice cider making, albeit in a roundabout way.

Pouliot grew up on a cattle farm, but left rural life behind to pursue a film career in Montreal. But by the late '80s, the then-twentysomething filmmaker began to feel a strong desire to return to the land.

"I was driving home from Magog in 1989 when I saw the sign outside Christian's vineyard in Dunham. I decided to check it out and that's when I decided to get into winemaking," he says.

Under the guidance of Barthomeuf, Pouliot bought a plot of land and planted 5,000 grape vines, in the hopes of getting in on the icewine craze. But by 1994, a combination of bad luck and forward thinking spurred him to shut down his initial venture and purchase the apple orchard that would form his current base of operations.

"Once the methods were perfected, I knew it would be much easier to make terrific ice cider than [an] OK ice wine. My idea from the beginning was to have a superior product that I could take with me to film festivals around the world. Instead of French champagne, they would serve Qué bécois cidre de glace," he says.

Indeed, since La Face Cachée de la Pomme entered full-scale commercial production in 2001, its line of ice, dry and sparkling ciders can be found in over a dozen countries around the world.

As with traditional icewine making, most ice cider begins with a process called cryoextraction, where apples are left to freeze on the tree, concentrating their natural sugars. The frozen apples are then pressed and the resulting juice is fermented with wine yeast for about eight months.

Alternatively, a less intensive method called cyroconcentration is applied, whereby the juice of unfrozen apples is extracted and left outside to freeze over a long period, then processed.

In both cases, the resultant sweet, almost syrupy beverage is occasionally aged in oak casks to further mature its flavours.

It takes anywhere from 50 to more than 100 apples, using a mix of common and heirloom varieties to strike the proper sweet-tart balance required to produce a single 375 millilitre bottle of ice cider — hence the typical $20 to $50 price tag.

"If you see [an ice cider] selling for 12 bucks at Costco, it's because it isn't genuine ice cider," says Pouliot, who's wary of the lack of industry regulation allowing some unscrupulous producers to cut corners.

Along with his main rival Charles Crawford, owner of the Domaine Pinnacle cidery, where Barthomeuf has been plying his expertise since leaving La Face Cachée in 2000, Pouliot has been pressing the government of Quebec to enforce strict standards on what qualifies as ice cider.

Together, Crawford and Pouliot's operations constitute about 80 per cent of Quebec's annual ice cider output of over half a million bottles, with the remainder divided between about 50 smaller competitors. Pouliot says that, on top of the ever-growing number of Quebecers hoping to cash in on ice cider's cachet, apple farmers and traditional cider makers in the rest of Canada, the U.S. and Europe are starting to jump on the ice cider bandwagon.

While there are some concerns that a flood of low-quality ice cider would threaten the reputation that conscientious producers have worked hard to cultivate, Pouliot sees it differently: "With proper standards, competition will be good for business. We wouldn't want Bordeaux to be the only wine in the world. It's great for Quebec, because our product will always be the original."

The author is a Canadian print and video freelance journalist.

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