3 tips for keeping your cider well

By fashionlifeshopping 29/06/2022 1358 Views

Keeping wine lying in a cellar at the perfect temperature is a reflex for many.

For its part, cider has never been considered a product for laying down. Consumed within the year, its potential for prolonged aging had never been explored until today.

So, if some ciders keep, how long can we keep cider, how to keep them for 6 months, 1 year, 5 years or 10 years?

3 Tips for properly storing your Cider

We give you 3 little tips to best preserve your ciders.

1. Adapt its position according to the bottle

Standing up or lying down, a cider with a cork or a capped cider is not stored in the same way.

Your cider is in a champagne bottle with a cork quality ? Keep it lying down. In this way, the liquid will always be in contact with the cork, itself in contact with oxygen. Thus, the cider will be able to live, evolve and the cork will not dry out.

Conversely, cider capped or corked with a poor quality cork is best kept upright. The upright position will prevent the cork from rotting or the capsule from degrading. The lying position will also allow the lees to descend naturally. Otherwise, get ready for some pretty bottle explosions in the cellar.

2. Store your cider in a cool place

Do you want to free up some space in your fridge? You will need to find a cool place, ideally around 12°C. Keep this temperature constant to avoid large variations in heat and disrupt the work of the yeasts (especially in the case of an unpasteurized cider with natural foaming). A temperature below 0°C will completely stop the work of the yeasts and your cider will no longer develop. On the contrary, too high a temperature (above 20°C) will accelerate it. In this case, the fermentation can resume at a frantic pace and there is a good chance that your bottle will explode.

3. Place your cider in the dark

Like wine, cider is extremely sensitive to UV rays. Glass bottles – mainly white – do not protect against ultraviolet rays, cider can oxidize on contact with them. Install your cuvées in a cupboard or any other place not exposed to light. In the case of a cellar, prefer low intensity bulbs and avoid neon lights.

Which cider and how long can it be kept?

It is not uncommon to hear that cider can only be kept for a year. "After that, you can use it in cooking or make vinegar out of it." It's wrong. Cider keeps and even very well for some. If you are one of the curious patients, do not hesitate to “forget” a beautiful cuvée to uncork it in 2, 5, 10 or even 20 years!

To do this, favor ciders with a tannic character such as Cotentin ciders which have recently explored prolonged ageing, Cornouaille AOPs or extra-bruts made mainly of bitter apples. Indeed, these so-called “phenolic” apples give the cider a perfect aging potential. The tannins are refined, rounded, the sugars are reduced, a new aromatic palette is emerging.

In another universe, perries are also very beautiful products to keep and rediscover a few years later.

Read the label of the chosen cuvée carefully, the cider must be unpasteurized and naturally foaming, otherwise no evolution will be possible.

Last tip: decant or serve your cider 5-10 minutes before serving!