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  1. Moreover, in your example the 2000 gallon tanks of Cidery A would likely need higher-powered / more expensive temperature control equipment than the smaller 200 gallon vessels of Cidery B.

    While smaller producers in temperate areas can often get away with fermenting 200-300 gallons of juice in an IBC that costs maybe $300 in the right ambient temperature conditions, Cidery A’s large thermal mass of fermenting juice is likely going to need an expensive glycol system to keep it chilled to an acceptable fermentation temperature.

    Maybe one could DIY a glycol system to chill 2000 gallons, but my guess is that the more likely outcome is spending in the neighborhood of $10k or more for a commercial glycol chiller and accompanying plumbing / fluid / accessories to get a sufficient chilling system in place.

    This isn’t to say that Cidery A couldn’t be creative with their equipment, but I think it’s meaningful to note that it becomes harder to do so with larger-scale batches.

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    1. The word vintage comes from French ‘vin’ – the word for wine, not the word for grape. If they used the French word for grape it would be ‘raisinage’. So the better parallel is to use the French word for cider ‘cidre’ and make it ‘cidrage’. Anyone know what cider makers in Normandy use?


  2. I don’t have any insight into what French cidermakers use in practice, but it looks like récolte, or harvest, shows up periodically on some French and Canadian cider labels, although with no great consistency:

    Etienne Dupont puts the year on their French language labels but doesn’t label it as vintage or anything else:
    Their English language labels (for import, I assume) describe the year as “bottled in”:

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