This cider house rules – a Breton brings cider to Brussels
It was the fag end days of a wintery January day in early 2017, and Joran Le Stradic was propped up at the bar of 1030 Cafe, one of a rash of bars recently opened around the Josaphat Park in Brussels’ Schaarbeek district. Having moved from his Breton town of Plouey in four years previously for work, Le Stradic had fallen out of love with the corporate life. In between beers, he complained about working for corporations and, just as he did when disaffected with his studies during university, joked with the bar’s owners that he was going to return to his Gallic roots and open a creperie.
Eventually, one of the owners called his bluff: “We’re looking to do something on Sundays, when the bar is usually closed. Come over, try your crepes, and we’ll do a Breton brunch.” Le Stradic accepted the challenge, but a little over two years later crepes have taken a supporting role to another proud Breton tradition, and one that emerged as his true passion – cider. In September 2019 Le Stradic swapped sides of the bar when he opened Brussels’ (Belgium’s?) first dedicated cider bar, the world of corporate drudgery well and truly behind him.
Breton crepes need Breton cider
“At that moment in 2017, I realised that I just couldn’t work for a multinational that are throwing money to their shareholders while firing their workers,” Le Stradic says, sitting in August 2019 on a makeshift terrace that will eventually become “JORAN – Cidrothèque”, builders busying themselves inside with angle grinders. He had two months between the invitation from 1030 and his first event, which was useful: Le Stradic had no idea how to make them.
A couple of quick phone calls back home to the local creperie to get the secret recipe followed. “Water and flour – wow, what a big secret!” he says. Crepes sorted, he then needed to find something to pair with them, and in Brittany that only meant one thing. “I said that to eat Breton crepes we need to serve it with Breton cider.”
Le Stradic knew cider better than he knew crepes, but not by much. He knew the difference between sweet and drier cider, and between cider from Brittany and cider from Normandy – “Breton was good and Norman was not!” – but that was as deep as his knowledge went. “I grew up having ciders all around me, but it was all the same and not really very interesting – just traditional stuff, the cider of the local farmer of the village,” Le Stradic says.
Sweet and dry
During his investigations into which cider to pair with his crepes, Le Stradic was clear in what he wanted, and clearer on what he did not want. “Most producers who said on their website, ‘We have a sweet, a dry, and a something in between cider’, I wouldn’t go to this place,” he says. “Because, that was just a farm on the corner, the same in every town and village.” Nevertheless, a recce home to find some bottles to serve with his crepes brought him to what he thought was just this sort of cidermaker.
But instead of a range of ciders comprising the standard three variations, Le Stradic noticed that there were other, unfamiliar bottles on the shelves. One in particular caught his eye. Cider has a long history in Brittany, and many of the apples local to the region are used to make monovarietal ciders where, instead of the more orthodox approach of blending different apples with different characteristics to achieve a balanced cider, one single type of apple is used.
And in Brittany, these apples tended towards the bitter end of the spectrum. The particular monovarietal cider that caught Le Stradic’s eye on this visit was however made solely with juice from slightly acidic Guillevic apples. Tasting it, and looking around at the other ciders on display, the possibilities of what a cider could be dawned on him.
“I discovered new flavours in this Guillevic cider I’d never tasted before,” he says. A more mundane revelation hit him at the same time, one that gave a peek into a whole other world of ciders and cider flavours. “Of course! Different types of apples make different types of cider, just like different types of grapes make different types of wine. It makes sense!” he says now.
Evangelising for cider
From then on, Le Stradic was lured away from his original crepes and towards cider, reconnected with his roots in French cider country, discovering a world of fermented apple and pear juice hitherto unknown to him. “I thought I would open a creperie; then it was a creperie with a large selection of cider. Then it became a cider bar where you can eat crepes’” he says.
The more he discovered – new producers, new ciders – the more his vision became one of him as a proselytising Breton bringing proper cider to Brussels. “I’ve tasted so many products that are so amazing and no one knows about, I have to share them with the world,” Le Stradic says. “I have a sort of educative mission.”
In putting cider front and centre in his new venture, the Cidrothèque, he also wants to rescue cider’s reputation as a poorly made, cheap drink worth neither the money nor the respect of proper drinkers. Le Stradic’s view is that the old traditions of cider making are not well-received by today’s drinkers (in Europe at least) and what was once a drink popular all over the continent is in need of a reboot.
And his reboot, in the form of the Cidrothèque, hews closely to the anti-corporate sentiments that first set him down this path. “My vision is of only working with independent cider makers, so you can forget about Bulmers, Strongbow, Magners, Somersby,” he says. “For me, that’s not even cider, there’s only about 20% apples in there. My bar is going to be 100% full, fermented juice.”
As of September 2019, that bar is now finished and open for business - kitted out with a rotating selection of ciders both carbonated and flat – the former served on tap and the latter through a traditional British handpump – as well as a large stock of sought after ciders from producers from the UK, France, Luxembourg, Lithuania, and Belgium.
The bar is located on a side street off the chaotic Place Dailly in Schaarbeek. It’s a short walk uphill from the café where the first ideas that eventually morphed into the Cidrothèque were formed. “[The plan was] always in Schaarbeek,” Le Stradic says.
This is where he had his first break, where he’s lived since his move to Brussels, and the competition with other bars is less fierce in what is still a part of Brussels only just waking up to the tremors of gentrification.
Local support
Local support for the bar has been crucial, and Le Stradic has cast his net widely. “Opening something based on cider in Brussels, if your target is only people interested in cider, it’s not going to work,” he says. Instead, he wants the bar to be a welcoming place for people in the neighbourhood first, one that just happens to major in cider.
And the neighbourhood shares his excitement. Before launch, he successfully raised over €12,000 in a crowdfunding campaign, breaking his target and introducing himself to new fans. “Many people I’ve never seen in my life have put money into the project. It shows that it’s going to work,” he says.
Once Le Stradic has converted this corner of Brussels, and the rest of the city, to cider, already has his next mission: perry, cider’s even less respected pear juice cousin. “When perry is done well, when it is properly made it is the best thing ever – flavours in there you’ve never tasted before, so subtle, so beautiful,” he says. “I want everyone to taste a good perry in their life.” Starting with the residents of Schaarbeek.
JORAN Cidrothèque, Rue Jacques Jansen 3, 1030 Schaerbeek
Joran Le Stradic’s three Belgian (and one Luxembourgish) cidermakers to watch out for
“There once was lots of cider made in Belgium, but it’s disappeared in most places. At the moment there is almost nothing. I’m sure there are people making great cider in their backyards that I don’t know about, but here are three good, really good, and talented Belgian cidermakers that you can buy.”
“They make a very decent Belgian cider, super dry; it’s good, well-balanced, properly made cider. The use Belgian apples so you can’t get the richness and the complexity that you would have in an English or a Breton cider, but they play on something else, more dry.”
“They are more famous for their beers and spontaneous fermentation. But then cider is spontaneous fermentation (mostly), and these guys make good ciders. Not a lot and it sells out immediately. Normally I should be able to get a few bottles for the bar (but don’t tell anyone!).”
“No one knows about them because they have just started. I was super happy when they came to me, because they’ve just been making cider for themselves, and only a couple of months have they decided to start selling it. I think they collect apples from all around them. They do a good job, and the cider is well made. Like all Belgian ciders, on the dry, acidic side.”
“If we talk about the Benelux, there is one fantastic producer in Luxembourg, called Ramborn. They are on the border between Luxembourg and Germany, and they make amazing stuff. Sparkling, in kegs, on taps. They produce some cider that’s aged in barrels, with single malt whiskey barrels; that’s the best, beautiful!”