Drink your fruit: Winesap Cider

Stormalong, the Massachusetts cider maker, names each in its Rare Apple Series after one of the apples used to make the drink.

My idea to photograph the named apple with the cider is more playful than anything else, especially since most of these are blends of perhaps a half dozen different varieties.

Today's beverage, however, is a single varietal, one hundred percent Stayman Winesap. And that is a Stayman posing with the family group. 

Let's quaff.

The pour is a warm golden yellow with large bubbles. A big sweet cider aroma fills the kitchen right away.

This one is off-dry, like the others in the series, but it strikes my palate as the sweetest so far, by a stamen.

Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of offsetting tartness and the balance is excellent. The cider has a pleasant funky complexity and is refreshingly astringent in the finish. 

Per the can: this drink is 6.8% alcohol.

Compared to the others in the series I have sampled, Winesap charts a fruitier, less tannic course. I can report that it pairs well with cheese and with pizza.

Which Winesap?

Stayman and Winesap are actually two separate (but related) apples. The farmer who sold mine (1) grows both and (2) is not always too careful about telling one from the other. 

I recognize Stayman from its color and finish, which is darker, more purple, and less glossy than the true Winesap.

The true Winesap is at left. Stayman, right, is darker and has those distinctive lenticel dots.

Stormalong describes this cider as "Tart, Fruit Forward, with Notes of Strawberry & Jammy Fruit." To which I say this.

A decade of tasting apples doesn't really prepare me to assess cider! 

One of my favorite cider bloggers (you do know that is a thing, right?) has a more nuanced, if still playful, take on Winesap, which you might enjoy.

Apropos

• Stayman to eat
• Stayman to drink

Also in the series

• Ashmead's Kernel cider
• Esopus Spitzenberg cider
• Yarlington Mill cider