Onirique Cider Recolte Automnale Dry Sparkling Hard Cider Sonoma County 2023

Growing up in Marin with a father who worked in the wine industry, Jeremy went to Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo for wine and viticulture, and took a job with Louis Latour in Burgundy after graduating. In hopes of escaping the dreary Burgundian winter, however, he spontaneously reached out to cider producers in Normandy and got a job at a small family farm in 2020 to help with their harvest. His return to California in 2022 brought him back to winemaking in Sebastopol, but on the side, he dreamt up his next project, Onirique, translating from French to “dreamlike.” 2023 was his first vintage using native Sebastopol apples, the likes of which he’s said his French friends would consider quite ordinary and unexciting compared to normal cider varieties. “I decided to prove to them, to prove to myself, that we could take these Normand techniques and apply them to “unremarkable” apples,” he said. The result has been anything but unremarkable – in fact, we’re quite floored by the quality, freshness, and vibrancy here.

Jeremy uses a unique combination of both American and French techniques, both old world and new. Unlike many American cideries, he doesn’t like oak influence in his ciders and appreciates a punch of sweetness to highlight the fruit characters and offer some depth, akin to his French training. Unlike his French comrades, however, he removes sediment from his ciders through filtering, and his ciders don’t have the funkiness from brettanomyces yeast that often lives in the old cellars of Normandy cideries. He makes his ciders in a pristine winery, and that environment actually adds to the clean, crisp flavors in his bottlings.

The Recolte Automnale is what he calls his friendliest cider to American drinkers – an all-in-all classic cider that is deep gold in color with copper highlights. Weighty and round, it has some crisp red apple sensations to start, then fresh-cut hay, orange blossom, and toasty clove. In the next moment, you’ll taste even more apples (he uses a medley of local Sebastopol varieties), then apricots, sourdough bread, and accents of a copper penny. The finish is brisk and very dry for cider, with a noticeable and happy tannic appeal, plus more orange peel and clove sensations lingering on the finish. This is a wonderfully refreshing sipper – both with food and without – and a magnificent effort from a young producer that we are excited to keep watching! For the slick price of $22, it’s one you could easily pop open any day of the week and enjoy in spades. As the French say, santé! Cheers!