Bordatto – Basa Jaun

Apples: A blend of 15 estate-grown, heirloom varietals.

Farming: Practicing Organic

Vinification: Each of the different apple

varietals are fermented seperately with indigenous yeast for 6 months. Bottled aged for 3 months before release. Mild carbonation occurs naturally in bottle, no dosage. There is 10g/L of residual sugar.

Bordatto’s Bitxinxo Aphaule started his career as a winemaker but soon fell in love with cider. He founded Bordatto with the idea that he could craft a better cider by applying farming methods utilized in vineyards to apple orchards. Terroir is often overlooked when people talk about cider but Bitxinxo feels that characteristics of the site such as soil, orientation, tree age and varietal are just as important to cider, as they are to wine and he’s out to prove it. Green harvests and extensive pruning are employed in the orchards, and all of the apples are hand-harvested and only native yeasts are used in all stages of fermentation. Bitxinxo makes three ciders. The flagship cider of Bordatto is the Txalaparta, named for the traditional Basque percussion instrument. This cider is named after a traditional basque musical instrument. A txalaparta is two musicians playing on wood; this cider is two apples “playing” on wood. Made from a blend of indigenous apple varietals Aphez Sagarra and Eztika, the cider is slow fermented in a combination of 225L and 400L oak barrels and stainless steel tanks