Core Values: Apple Fest

The thing about distillation is a “a lot” makes “a little.”  That is, it takes a mountain of apples to make a batch of Fair Game Apple Brandy.

We haven’t made a batch for a few years.  That’s a good thing, because it is aging in barrels and becoming darker, richer, and more complex with each passing year.

But when we do buy apples, we buy only North Carolina grown.  And when we make an apple buy, we buy more pounds than any NC orchard has on hand in one day.

We buy from the apple crusher.  Our favorite is Greg at Apple Wedge in Hendersonville. He aggregates apples from orchards throughout the region and squishes them into raw apple juice.

Apple brandy starts with apple juice. 

When we buy juice, we buy six thousand gallons at a time.  Enough to fill one of those shiny stainless steel eighteen wheelers you see driving down the highway. 

To buy a truckload of apple juice, we are getting in line with Ingles and Wal Mart who both sell private label juice. 

The juice is different every time.

Apples are funny.  One year there will be a late frost that will eliminate all the Pink Ladys.  But it might be a bumper year for Honey Crisp.

We buy juice from whatever we can get—inviting variability into each batch. Distillers are always hungry for sugar—and sugar content varies from variety to variety.

Once the juice arrives, we pitch our yeast, which makes a crude apple cider, which is then distilled into our apple brandy.  Many pounds of apple flesh are reduced to gallons of apple juice, many gallons of juice are converted to cider, then distilled into small amounts of apple brandy.

For years we have celebrated the fall with “Apple Brandy Opening Day.”  It was a recognition of our customer’s preference.  They tend to move off the “white” spirits like gin and vodka into darker spirits like apple brandy and whiskey as the weather turns.

Seer sucker suits pair with gin.  Parkas pair with apple brandy.

When our neighbors at Starrlight Mead started making apple cider, we decided to transform Apple Brandy Opening Day into Core Values: Apple Fest.

That way customers could experience Fair Game’s latest apple brandy release, and Starrlight’s apple cider offerings at the same time.

We are both residents of the Plant, in Pittsboro, a food, beverage, and entertainment destination that is home to a bunch of local food festivals.

Both companies will be embedded in a day of “apple everything.”  Festivals at the Plant typically include fresh fruit vendors, talks by experts, tours of the farm or heirloom apple orchard which grazes the edge of the Fair Game Wheelhouse.

There are also craft vendors, baking vendors and educational non-profits. Fair Game will release an apple shrub (a drinking vinegar), and there may very well be apple butters, apple pie and other apple creations not yet envisioned.

Footnote: The Plant's Town of Pittboro was once home to Lee Calhoun, author of Old Southern Apples; a Comprehensive History and Description of Varieties for Collectors, Growers, and Fruit Enthusiasts.

I miss Lee.  He was a former military man that grew his apples with strict discipline—perfectly pruned and trained along wires to suit his immaculate Japanese garden.  I’m sure he would smile at the fact that Pittsboro became home to Core Values: Apple Fest. His book frequently rests on the tables of Fair Game Beverage.