The History of the Newtown Pippin Apple Apples do not grow true. If you plant a Gravenstein apple seed (called a pip) the tree that results will not produce Gravenstein apples. It may share some similar traits with the parent apples but it will be its own unique type of apple. Most of the time …
A Brief History of Sebastopol Brandy In today’s newsletter deep dive we take a moment to reflect on local history and those who paved the way for us to do what we do. This is a rich topic with many rabbit holes to explore and we will certainly revisit it in the future, but today …
In our last newsletter we started an exploration of Calvados with a walk through the orchards and a look at the apples and fermentation of the cider that will become Calvados. Today we continue the study of the terroir of Calvados – moving from the cider to the distillation and maturation of the spirit. We …
Today we have part one of a two part reflection on the Terroir of Calvados – the place, the producers, and the many details that make the apple spirits produced in a small region of Normandy unique. At Ambix Spirits we are seeking the terroir of Sonoma County. However, to understand our own terroir, we …
Today we explore the basics of distillation and the physics of how we turn 7% alcohol by volume (abv) Apple cider into 70% abv, which is the strength at which we collect our brandy. As an example, we will use our Newtown Pippin cider which fermented to 7.4% abv. The other 92.6% of the cider …
As you know we like to take the end of our mailings and nerd out with deep dives into the minutia of our craft. Today that deep dive is an exploration of history and the most common questions that we are asked at the tasting room. “Why Ambix”?” The shortest but least satisfying answer is …
Harvest Update It’s been a hectic but productive harvest for us. This has been been our first harvest in our new facility and has been tiring but successful. Harvest in Sonoma County has been much later than normal and we’re seeing 3-4 weeks later than typical dates. We started our harvest back in late-August and …
Estate Harvest Update We have been busy picking our first harvest from our home orchard. Above is an image of over 600 pounds of Virginia Hewes, an amazing apple with great flavor and sugars but a very painful one to harvest as we are collecting thousands of small ping pong ball sized fruit. To date …