Cider house rules
Alexander Matthews stops turning his nose up at the golden liquid
WHEN I was offered cider at a brunch several months ago, I accepted a glass out of politeness — I didn’t have the heart to tell hosts Laura Clacey and Karol Ostaszewski that I couldn’t abide the drink: it’s too sugary, like jumped-up fruit juice, for this beerand-wine man.
That was before I’d tasted their craft cider, SXOLLIE, made with Golden Delicious apples in Elgin. The first glassful disappeared quickly and I ended up having several more it was so darn good: slightly tart, generously bodied, an easy-going fizzy sweetness — the ideal brunch companion.
The couple are on a mission to convert sceptics (like me) into fans. “It feels like we are trying to explain the difference between Oros versus fresh-pressed orange juice to someone who has never seen an orange,” Clacey says of the challenge.
While there is a steady increase in the number of craft ciders on offer in South Africa, SXOLLIE is the only one to produce from single varietals. In addition to Golden Delicious and Perry Packham Pear, SXOLLIE’s Granny Smith launched last month.
“The idea behind our single varietal ciders comes from our passion for drinking wine. Everyone has their favourite wine varietal, be it Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin or a juicy Pinotage. You notice subtle differences in each wine that stick with you and make you fall in love. We wanted to create the same thing with ciders.”
To honour the natural characteristics of the cider, artificial additives are a big no-no — only champagne yeast is added, unlike most competitors, who, Clacey says, “use apple concentrate or cane sugar to ferment and sweeten the product. We ferment using fresh-pressed apples and gain sweetness by blending back apple juice that was pressed hours before.”
Although there will always be slight differences from vintage to vintage, “it should always taste good”, she says. “I dare you to line up eight ciders, both local and international, and do the taste test. Harrods did this with over 50 ciders and chose to list us, the first cider in over a decade. There are a few other international brands looking to list us as we speak.”
For Joburg-born Clacey and London-born Ostaszewski, starting a craft cider brand when relocating to Cape Town from Sydney was something of a no-brainer. Their research showed them that SA was home to export-quality apples, had one of the biggest markets for cider, and that cider was the fastest growing alcohol category in the world.
Ostaszewski was no newbie to the industry, having spent five years collaborating with an Australian farmer to produce a craft cider called The Apple Thief; Clacey helped out over weekends.
But setting up in SA was a struggle. “Being tenacious, we learnt to hustle to get by and as soon as we realised that doing business here is all about the hustle, things started to move a bit faster,” says Clacey.
“No one hustles better than a SXOLLIE. We salute everyone who has had to hustle to get something started.” Of the name, Clacey says: “I wanted people to smile when they saw the name and we wanted to invoke a sense of pride that we as South Africans own this name.
“The design had to be proudly African too,” she says. The bold colours are inspired by beadwork and textile design. “We wanted a brand that stood for all of Africa. I think this idea that we are all linked through mergence and divergence is awesome.” LS