Apples and Production

Asturias has always been a synonym of cider. There is no Asturias without cider, and no cider without Asturias. This is how it has always been. In fact, apples and cider have defined the character and customs of our people for centuries.

Our landscape, defined by deep green mountains and blue ocean waters, is covered with a blanket of white flowers in the springtime. They are the flowers of our orchards. Apple trees start flowering in the spring and showing the first signs of the upcoming harvest that starts in October and lasts through the first weeks of December.

This is when the cider mills are filled with apples, when the wooden cider press is woken to juice the hundreds of varieties of cider apples. Today, these apples are still being farmed using traditional Asturian methods.

Our Orchards

One of the fundamental concerns of Trabanco Group has always been, and still is, having access to quality raw materials. Apple quality is essential to produce quality cider, and that is why we pay special attention when ing the best quality and best variety apples out there.

This is also when apple juice is distributed.  Some juice is given to the children at home, who devour it at traditional chestnut roasting festivities. The remaining juice is used to fill traditional wooden barrels to start the fermentation process. This is when the cider maker proves himself.

The first cider of the year arrives in March. March 19 is when new cider is traditionally tasted and also when the cider maker association, Sidra de ManzanaSeleccionada (Apple-ed Cider), of which Trabanco Cider is a member, are recuperating as a point of reference to publicly present new harvest cider.

We currently own around 100 hectares of plantations, which allows us to be innovative and ive with the varieties we consider to be most appropriate for each type of cider. This also gives us the opportunity to establish quality control measures in the entire production process.

In our plantations, we combine the most traditional techniques with the latest innovations in caring for our apple trees.
The objective: to obtain optimum performance in each harvest, both in quantity and quality.

Having our own plantations allows us to take our research one step further, incorporating the varieties we consider adequate for the different types of cider we produce.

We ed a specific plantation for our first brut nature cider, PomaÁurea (due to its location and layout, to make the most of daylight hours), and for our two specific, traditional apple varieties, Regona and Raxao (they give us the acid-bitter balance we want for our cider).

We are also committed to contributing to the recovery of traditional Asturian apple varieties that are currently at risk of becoming extinct  due to the general standardization of varieties.

We contribute to the valuation of apple varieties that are going extinct by growing them in our plantations and by purchasing them from local providers. These apples,  nevertheless, provide very high quality and added value to our traditional cider.