The nordic wine revolution
In Denmark we have fruits that balance refined aromatics with bright acidity. Apples, pears, cherries, plums. You could go on. But our cider and wine culture was never properly developed. Over the last decades the local food culture here in Copenhagen has been elevated. Now the time has come to take a look at what we drink, how and where it is produced.
“I remember when we came up with the idea to make wine. It was the late summer of 2015 at my uni graduation party. Gathered around beers in a Copenhagen park, we started to discuss the lack of a local wine tradition and culture.”
Ciders and fruit wines have the potential to make up the very foundation of a New Nordic Drink Revolution. We want to prove that they can be as complex and vinous as (grape) wine, quenchy as kombucha, sour as lambic, and fruitful as freshly squeezed juice. And fun too!
backyard burgundy and co-fermentation
And so we started producing spontaneously fermented ciders and fruit wines from the surplus backyard apples of Copenhagen in a similar manner as sparkling wines are produced. We were just using apples instead of grapes. In Denmark authorities estimate that around 5 million kilos of apples rot in the gardens every year. Why not use these babies properly?
With backgrounds in Literature, Spanish Studies and TV Production we were no fermentation experts but with guidance from a DIY newspaper article we ended up with a tiny production. Some 100 bottles came out of it, produced in some parent’s garage in the Nordvest neighbourhood of Copenhagen.
“We believe the wines of tomorrow are made in the old school way. As with natural wine this means spontaneous fermentation and low intervention winemaking so the wine stays true to the fruit, alive and vibrant.”
Alongside our focus on the Danish garden apples we began collaborating with some of the best organic orchards in Denmark. Also we found ourselves adding other fruits to the mix in the pursuit of creating new flavours out of co-fermentation - grapes, pears, blackcurrant, cherries, raspberries, plums - and the result was dry, juicy and very vinous sparkling fruit wines - or as we like to call them - fruit pét-nats - since they are nothing like the traditional idea of ciders and fruit wines.