Write a commentJohn and Amy Enwright have a vision: a wine trail running between Fair Haven and Oswego. The couple is doing their part to make it happen.
The Enwrights have worked together to bring a best in class award-winning hard cider to market: Purely Pomme Honeycrisp Rosé.
The cider starts in their young orchard in Sterling, where John tests the apples for ripeness before picking. He chooses varieties that will work together to add just the right mix of sugar, acid, and tannins for their next batch of cider. Modern varieties of apples tend to be easier to grow, but the Enwrights have many older, more storied apples in their orchard—like our founding fathers' favorite, the Newtown Pippin, enjoyed by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin.
“The older apples have a deeper flavor profile with more aroma compounds, more tannins, higher malic acid and often higher sugar,” John told iHeart Oswego. In comparison, “There’s just not a lot going on with [modern varieties].”
Once the apples have reached the perfect stage of ripeness, they are picked and then prepped for pressing in the couple’s 1940s-era cider mill. “It’s an efficient rack and cloth press and makes a nice cider,” Enwright noted. The machine is affectionately known as the “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” thanks to the noises it makes during production. “We’d like to give a huge thank you to Chris and Mindy Colloca for helping us get started,” they added.
The Sterling-based winery has leased the Enwrights space to produce the cider on-site.
John is used to working with exacting industrial standards: he has an engineering background and works as a senior operator at Sithe. This same attention to quality shows up in the way he runs the cidery: researching and cultivating yeast strains, working extensively with the Cornell Cooperative Extension, and contacting other local apple growers to understand every part of the apple growing process, from growing saplings by grafting trees from scions sourced from around the world and grown in their nursery to marketing the finished cider product.
It’s a far cry from his first experiment with home brewing, in his dad’s garage as a mischievous teenager. But don’t underestimate the importance of those early experiences—brewing is a big part of John’s family life. His grandfather made cider in oak barrels in his basement after WWII. Additionally, his father home-brewed beer in the ‘90s, and his cousin Neil Ficcurilli has been a help as an experienced beer brewer in the Rochester area. “He gave us a lot of tips to get us started,” Amy told iHeart Oswego, “especially regarding the cider mill.”
In order to have a slow, healthy fermentation designed to draw out the best flavors in each carefully blended batch of cider, a proper yeast pitch is important with proper nutrient additions to create and sustain a healthy yeast colony.
After fermentation, dead and dormant yeast is racked off to create a good clean, clear brew. “If you don’t pitch enough, it can stress the cider and give off a rotten egg smell,” John said, “but if you pitch too much and it goes too fast, you’ll blow out all the flavor.”
The Enwrights have certainly found a winning combination. Their first batch to go out on the market, the Honeycrisp Rosé, earned their cider company a GLINTCAP (Great Lakes International Cider And Perry) Best in Class Award. GLINTCAP is the largest most prestigious cider competition in the World, and Purely Pomme competed against 78 other top cideries in the specialty ciders division. The Enwrights’ new variety, Porter’s Gold, also took a silver medal. Look for that variety to hit shelves this fall.
The care and dedication the couple bring to their orchard and the entire brewing process is obvious. From the spacing of the trees to the design of the label on the bottle, everything is painstakingly examined and crafted to perform at its best. Amy, an architect by trade, has created the business’s logo and designs labels for each of the cider varieties they create.
iHeart Oswego had a chance to taste both the rosé and the Porter’s Gold. The rosé offered a semi-sweet flavor profile thanks to the fresh-pressed Honeycrisp juice, with added tannic complexity from infusion with Riesling and Pinot Noir grape skins. For readers interested in a more traditional dry sparkling cider, the Porter’s Gold is a great choice—the dry sparkling cider gets its name from the Golden Russet and Porter’s Perfection apples it is made from. Uniquely, the cider is made using the Méthode Champenoise (yes, the same method used to make champagne).
You can find Purely Pomme at a growing number of local restaurants and liquor stores, including on the menu at Rooftop Lounge, Southern Fare, and Colloca’s tasting room; on the shelves at Bame’s Liqueurs in Oswego, and even as far west as the Rochester Yacht Club.
To follow Amy and John’s journey at Purely Pomme, follow them on Facebook.
