Carlos
Carlos Flores is an architect and landscape designer from Punta Arenas, Chile, with experience in territorial planning, eco-construction and working with communities.The last 5 years he has worked in southern Chile where he discovered the value of heritage apple orchards that are more than 100 years old and their enormous potential in soil regeneration.Pioneer in the use of agroforestry as a method for rejuvenating apple orchards and traditional fruit orchards in Patagonia.Today he is the CEO and Co-Founder of Punta de Fierro Fine Cider, a CORFO INNOVA winning project for the promotion of local traditions with a sustainable and community vision.
Eli
Eli Shanks is a Master Cidermaker from the North Eastern United States who has been making cider for over 10 years in the US and Chile.He is a serial entrepreneur in the premium food industry, having founded an urban farm, restaurant, bar, and two cideries. His goal is to help rural communities in Chile find sustainable ways to increase their standard of living so they can maintain their way of life.He currently lives in Chile and is the Chief Cidermaker and Co-Founder of Punta de Fierro Fine Cider.
Fine Cider
Fine Cider is as varied, complex, fascinating, and expressionate of the terroir from which it comes as fine wine.We see cidermaking to be acting as shepherd as the apples walk their noble path from orchard to glass.As with other fine cider makers, our process begins with the growing and selection of the apples. Grown in polycultural food forests, our 18 varieties of heirloom apples are intermingled with beneficial plants, herbs and pollinators in a deliberately managed, but also wild orchard of 130 year old trees.Scratted and pressed on equipment made from Chilean laurel wood, slow-fermented through the cold Valdivian winter and then aged for 12 months, this process provides the purest possible taste of the apples and the botanicals with which they grew.Good cider is a much greater rarity than good wine – J.M. Trowbridge, New York, 1890
Our Fine Cider
Punta de Fierro is the result of an effort to make a cider that is the highest quality, most faithful, natural representation of the patrimonial apples from the South of Chile. No amount of time or expense is spared where production is concerned.18 varieties of cider apples are collected from 13 orchards around Chancoyan that are in the process of being rescued. They are scratted and pressed on our own hand built wooden machinery, and the juice is slow fermented for over six months, and aged for a year or more.No sugar, sweetener, concentrate or gas is added. It is a dry, still cider, sealed with a cork and natural beeswax from our own bees. It is a gastronomic cider and is ideally enjoyed with a meal.
Our Story
Carlos bought Quinta Michay, the home of a 130 year old orchard next to Rio Cayumapu in 2011. He and his family began to intervene the orchard, planting edible ground cover, nitrogen fixing perenials, medicinal herbs, and letting their chickens and turkeys incorporate organic matter into the orchard.He began to experiment with making cider with the apples in the orchard as a side project, when a mutual friend connected him with Eli.Eli had a cidery and bar in Valparaiso, Chile, and had been making cider every year since he was first hired as an orchard manager, outside of Boston, when he was 17 years old. When he got down to Cayumapu, intending only to help Carlos start making his cider, he realized there was something very special going on in this area unlike anything he had seen in all cideries he had visited in the US or England.These were not the typical dessert apples with which most New World cider is made, and they also weren’t the traditional European cider apples. They were 18 distinct apples, perfect for pressing and complex in flavor. The climate there in Quinta Michay was also perfect for slow and careful fermentation.He convinced Carlos that they should make cider there together.
Eli brought his cider making equipment down from Valparaiso, and in May, 2021, they pressed their first cider.
Pairing
Fine Cider is as diverse as fine wine. These are a few of our favorite pairings for our cider, but if you discover great pairings, please write to us so we can give them a try!Cheese: Hard cheeses like Pecorino Toscano or Idiazábal, and soft, creamy cheeses like Chevre or even a grilled Halloumi.Meat: Glazed or roasted pork, and grilled lamb are perennial favorites, and we find that roast duck is also a great match for our cider.Vegetables: Roasted rosemary tomatoes, asparagus and a leafy spinach or arugula salad with feta and cranberries
How to buy
We are small scale cidermakers with a deliberately long and slow production process. We produce very few bottles every year in order to make sure our cider is a faithful representation of the land and community that produces it, without overtaxing it.For this reason, our cider can only be sold in limited quantities to restaurants and distributors who can demonstrate that they will do their part in communicating the attributes that differentiate a fine cider, the uniqueness and heritage of the apples, the ecosystem, and the rural community that maintains them.If you would like buy our cider for your restaurant or distribute it in your area, Please contact us at carlos@puntadefierro.com to schedule an interview.
Community
Punta de Fierro is a result of a community effort that goes back generations in the region of Los Rios.The area around Valdivia, Chile, was depopulated after a series of pirate raids. When the swashbuckling came to an end, people began to return.Some of those who came were European colonists with Dutch ancestry who were relocating from Peru, and brought with them their preferred apples for eating and making cider. The orchards they planted thrived in the cold, rainy weather of Los Rios, and are now over a hundred years old. Ours is around 130 years old.These orchards live on thanks to a constant effort on the part of the rural community and chicha makers who care for and celebrate these trees and their cultural significance in the region. Our cider is a result of a community effort.Our orchard is pruned and managed by local experts who have been working with these trees for their whole lives, and know the stories each apple has to tell about the history of this area.Our friends and neighbors pick the apples, grind and press them with us, and share in the fruits of our product.Our botanicals are grown and collected in our very orchard or in the surrounding forests by local foragers.We ferment and age the cider in our cidery next to the river Cayumapu.Our cider is then bottled in the bottling plants of other cider makers and beer makers in the area who support and appreciate this community project.Our label was designed by local designers.Our bottles are recycled and bought from local bottle collectors.Our labels are printed in a local print shop.When you hold a bottle Punta de Fierro, Fine Cider, you are have in your hands the result of a collective effort, with knowledge and resources that span continents and were built over generations in order to be the best possible representation of one of the most unique places on earth.
Thank You
Punta de Fierro Fine Cider
Patagonia Chilena
finecider@puntadefierro.com