Photo courtesy Brix Cider
Marie and Matt Raboin of Brix Cider
Marie and Matt Raboin of Brix Cider
“Wisconsin artisan cider is truly romantic and compelling, every bit as much as cheese or great beer. Upon meeting Matt, I just fundamentally liked him, so I was grateful that the ciders were delicious, well made and differentiated from one another. They're all refreshing and clean without being sanitized or stripped down.” — Bill Gardner, Brand Manager, Left Bank Wine and Spirits
It was at a family Thanksgiving dinner. I was the beverage director of a wine shop, café and restaurant in the city of Chicago, where I was serving a natural cider from Normandy called Julien Frémont Cidre Par Brut Natur. Its taste is bright and funky, rich and sour. Its core is pure apple. I like serving naturally fermented apple or pear ciders at Thanksgiving because the qualities of their complexity complement the diverse palate of flavors at the holiday table. When I served the Frémont cider at our family’s Thanksgiving, I saw my niece Marie and her boyfriend Matt were as taken with the cider as I was. Even then, Marie and Matt were experimenting with their own fermented ciders.
Since then, Marie and Matt completed master’s degrees in agroecology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, married and moved to Malawi, where Matt was an agricultural development officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development and Marie was assistant director of the Kusamala Permaculture Center. After moving back to Wisconsin, Matt was an outreach specialist at the University of Wisconsin Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems and Marie has been a land conservationist at the Dane County Land and Water Resources Department. Last year, Marie received the prestigious Conservationist of the Year Award from the Wisconsin Land and Water Conservation Association.
Together, Marie and Matt have been making the Wisconsin artisan ciders called Brix since 2016, and they’ve been serving their ciders, along with honest, local Wisconsin fare at their cidery in Mount Horeb since 2019. And since last year, Left Bank Wine and Spirits has been distributing Brix Ciders across the state. So now all of us can easily enjoy Marie and Matt’s beautiful Wisconsin artisan ciders.
An Interview with Matt Raboin, Co-owner of Brix Cider
Gaetano Marangelli: How do you describe quality hard cider like the kind you make to those who don't know what it is?
Matt Raboin: Quality hard cider captures a perfect fall day at an orchard and puts it in a bottle to be enjoyed anytime. A lot of commercial hard ciders are overly sweetened and artificial tasting. Naturally made ciders that simply use fresh pressed apple juice have the quality of a subtle, nuanced “apple champagne.”
GM: What made you and Marie want to grow apples and make cider in Wisconsin?
MR: We became fascinated with fermenting things, starting about 15 years ago when we were first dating. We made all sorts of things: ciders, beers, wines, and meads. We tried fermenting just about everything we got our hands on. We lived in Africa for a couple years, and we made all sorts of experimental beverages with the fruits we found there. It was while we were in Africa that we started dreaming of starting our own craft beverage business. With our interests and backgrounds in agriculture, we wanted to work with something that we could grow or that could be grown locally, and we landed on apples. Apples grow well in Wisconsin, and we really enjoyed the ciders we made, finding them much more pleasurable to drink than anything that was on the market in Wisconsin at the time.
GM: You make your ciders honestly, authentically, with Wisconsin apples. And you source the food you serve at your cidery’s restaurant locally, from small, family farms. Why?
MR: There’s such a huge disconnect in our society between consumers and the sources of their food and drink. For us, food and drink start on the farm, and there's so much more richness and depth to everything we eat and drink if we can connect it back to the farmers who grew it and the land it came from. So much food these days is just ultra-processed junk in a box, and it's hard to know if people were exploited somewhere along the value chain or if it was grown in a manner that was environmentally detrimental. We’re really lucky to be part of a vibrant local food community around Mount Horeb, and it wouldn't seem right to source our ingredients anywhere else.
GM: How have your and Marie’s studies and careers affected how you grow apples and make cider?
MR: Coming from a background of studying and working in agriculture, I think Marie and I brought a different perspective when entering the food and beverage business. A lot of chefs and brewers only think about ingredients as a means towards getting to a desired flavor profile, without paying much attention to where they came from. For us, we’re also really interested in the stories that the ingredients themselves have to tell. We want our customers to experience more than just a good flavor. We want them to also feel a deeper satisfaction of feeling connected to the land around us and the people in our community.
GM: All of the ciders Brix makes are delicious, but my favorites are those you ferment spontaneously. Can you describe how you make those ciders?
MR: I also love the spontaneously fermented ciders the best. We do them on a more limited basis because they are less predictable and less shelf stable, but I think magical things happen when you just let the apples ferment themselves. In a way, they're the easiest ciders to make. All we do is press the apples, put the juice in a fermentation tank, and let it do its thing naturally. There are enough wild yeasts on and in the apples to manage the fermentation for us. Often, they take a little longer to get going, and the wild yeasts tend not to be as high attenuating as a commercial variety, sometimes leaving just a hint of sweetness rather than getting bone dry. The resulting ciders tend to be highly complex and endlessly intriguing. They’re not for everyone as you may get some odd flavors and aromas (things sometimes described with words like “barnyard, band aid, horse blanket, farmy, funky,” etc.), but in small doses, these flavors and aromas are part of a heightened fruitiness, ripeness, and lively quality that spontaneously fermented ciders tend to possess.
