Summer 2026 Release
Greetings!
Summer is in full swing at Seminary Hill. The trees are a vibrant green as they soak up the sunlight of the longest days. We have been walking the orchards, trying to get a sense of the size of the crop. The crabs are plentiful; Wickson, Puget Spice, Chestnut and Virginia Crab despite blooming early, made it through the April freeze surprisingly well. Redfield was not so lucky, only the trees in our high density block made it through with a crop. It will be another month or more before we get the full picture however. Our orchard walks have also allowed us to check up on the thirty or so trees we topworked back in early May. They are looking great, with some of the new shoots already more than a foot long!
Some of you might be wondering what I’m talking about, topworking? So before I go any further, let’s take a step back to the basics of apple tree propagation. The first thing to know is that apples are not true to seed. This means a specific apple variety can only be propagated by grafting. A number of different grafting techniques have been developed and honed over the ages, allowing us to take a scion (cutting of first-year wood from a known apple variety) and grow it on a rootstock. This is often done either as a bench graft in late winter, when both the scion and the rootstock are dormant or as a bud graft in the late summer, when the young rootstock is actively growing in the field and a dormant bud is spliced onto it. In both cases, only a single viable bud is needed to produce a new tree. Topworking is another form of grafting that is performed in the spring on mature apple trees. Any age tree can be topworked and the beauty of topworking (aside from allowing you to grow 10 apple varieties on a single tree, should you so choose), is that you can remove unwanted varieties and grow new ones without losing the decade plus it might take for a new tree to reach maturity. Instead topworked trees can produce fruit in less than half that time.
The process of topworking starts by making an initial cut on the main trunk of the tree about 12 inches above the location you want to make the grafts, normally somewhere between waist and chest height. This cut can be made anywhere between a few days to a few weeks before you graft. The goal is to remove the vast majority of the biomass of the tree, leaving the lower trunk and a single nurse limb, that will help direct sap to the grafting site until the new shoots are established. When you are ready to graft, you make a final cut at the graft location. Scions are cut to a length of 3-5 inches and a V is cut on one end creating a wedge with exposed cambium on each side. That wedge is then slipped between the bark and the heartwood of the trunk. This is easily done in spring as the flowing sap causes the bark to “slip.” On trees the size of ours, four scions were placed under the bark of each trunk at roughly even spacing. Lastly, the top of the trunk is covered with a thick coating of tree paste and the trunk is wrapped tightly with tape to maintain good contact between the tree and the scions. We topworked our trees during bloom and waited patiently to see the result. Some of the buds were slow to push, but a walk though the orchard last week revealed that almost all the grafts took! One of the advantages of topworking is the phenomenal growth you get right off the bat, since an entire root system is feeding just a handful of shoots. We are excited about the new varieties we added to the orchard through this process, which include Robert’s Crab as well as two varieties from the collection of John Bunker up in Maine.
Let’s not forget about cider! Some very exciting things have been happening in the cidery. Our first skin-contact cider was bottled this past month (a pre-release will be included with the 6 bottle release). Joshua is also working on a carbonic maceration made entirely from Harrison as well as a dandelion cyser. A rosé cider made entirely with redfleshed apple varieties is also in the early stages of blending. Our three varietal pommeaus are aging incredibly well; all distinctly different in their own right. The next few months we will be working to free up as many tanks as we can to prepare for the upcoming harvest. Hopefully we will also find a little time to relax and soak up the sun before the days begin to shorten.
With gratitude,
Chris and the Seminary Hill team
The Release
Making its debut in all the shares is our 2025 Quincy Perry. This is an even smaller batch of perry than we made last year, a scant 28 cases of 500ml bottles were produced. As the name suggests it also contains a small amount of quince. All the fruit in this perry was either grown in our orchard or foraged from neighborhood trees. With its light body and subtle sweetness coming from unfermentable sorbitol commonly found in pears, it is truly the perfect compliment to summer. All shares will also have our 2023 single varietal Dabinett. This English bittersweet has gained recognition over the years for its ability to create a complex varietal cider. Its rich earthy tannins and dominant aromatics create a cider that is complex, full bodied and reminiscent of many French and English ciders with their low acidity and prominent tannins. The three bottle release is rounded out with our 2023 Nicksen. This cider will be gone before long so we wanted to share it with you again. As one of our sweeter, more fruit forwarded ciders it is ready for the lake, the deck or the campfire.
Six bottle shares will get a second Quincy Perry, a 2022 Cackling Hen and a pre-release bottle of our 2024 Mirage. We are particularly excited about the Mirage, which is our first skin-contact cider made with 100% estate grown Redfield apples and Catawba grape skins from our friends at dear native grapes. This is our first attempt at a skin-contact cider and the result is truly something special. After 7 months on the skins, the cider, which already displayed strawberry notes characteristic of Redfield, took on jammy and berry notes galore. This is the perfect cider for that summer bbq or picnic – incredibly food friendly, yet all too drinkable on its own. If you are not in the 6 bottle club, keep an eye out for its official release in the coming months.
