Berlin’s not exactly hurting for places to get a stiff drink. The German capital is home to dozens of wine bars, craft beer bars, and cocktail bars. Now, thanks to a Francophile brother-sister team originally from Canada, there’s even a French cider bar.
The Montreal-born Sidney Kristiansen moved from Paris to the idyllic Normandy countryside a few years back, and with all the great cheese, impressive coastline, and sprawling hillsides, initially refused to budge. But familial ties called him to Berlin, where he started a business with his sister Leila, a chef based in the German capital. Together, they combined a love of northern France, a healthy dose of booze and travel, and a good amount of business opportunity to create the French cider market Comptoir du Cidre.
Videos by VICE
Although Germans tend to be familiar with Apfelwein, some regard it as sour and somewhat unpleasant. Sidney and Leila want to set Berliners straight about just what French cider is—a farmhouse-style fermented mix of apple and pear juice that is more reminiscent of beer than wine, with just as wide a range of flavors, including light and crisp tastes, rich tannic qualities thanks to cask aging, and occasionally those funky notes for fermentation geeks. Sidney travels around Normandy searching out the region’s best ciders—chasing down farmers and sometimes being chased by llamas in the process—while Leila is the culinary brains of the pair, creating dishes like steak cider and cider-cured salmon for their recently opened tapas-style cider bar.
I recently met with Sidney and Leila at their newly opened Prenzlauer Berg restaurant to talk about the project, the many flavors of French cider, and cows raised on a lush diet of apple-y alcohol.
MUNCHIES: I’ve tasted your ciders at the Bar Market, at Markthalle Neun, and also at the new Neue Heimat market. I feel like you’re the ambassadors in Berlin for this beverage. Sidney Kristiansen: Yes, so that’s the idea, even with the name Comptoir du Cidre. “Comptoir” has two meanings. In French, comptoir is the bar, and in German comptoir or Kontor are posts that countries used to open up abroad to present their products. So this is a comptoir of cider.
Sidney, you live in France, and Leila lives in Berlin. Where did the passion for cider come into the mix? Leila Kristiansen: Well, we wanted to do something together. Growing up, we were always close, and moving here to Europe we started to reconnect our friendship again. One summer I was lucky enough to go and visit Sid in Normandy, and we cooked, we drank, and it was really fun. After, we decided we needed to do something together, to start a project. Going over ideas, we thought about how we could connect Normandy and Germany, because Sid didn’t want to leave Normandy. And it was cider.
Sidney: We looked for great food products because Leila is a great cook; that’s been her passion for 20 years. So we knew it had to be food-related, and something that Germans would appreciate, but something coming from Normandy.
What exactly is the difference between Normandy cider and German Apfelwein? Sidney: Cider is more like a beer, so it’s bubbly, unlike Apfelwein, which is more like a wine and is flat. It’s lower in alcohol; it ranges from 3 to 7 percent. A beer averages around 5; an Apfelwein is 9 to 12. And taste-wise, you’ve got sweet to extra-dry to bitter notes. In Normandy it’s really treated more like a daily beer beverage, an alternative to beer, and that’s how it’s drunk. It’s not considered at all to be an alternative to wine or treated like a wine.
Which is how it’s treated here? Sidney: No, here they don’t know about cider. I mean, it’s something that’s coming and developing, but when we started the project back in April last year, they were like, “Oh, Apfelwein.” Their immediate reaction was, “Oh that’s sour, I don’t like it.”
Leila: [laughs] They always rub their stomachs and make a face.
Sidney: So the idea of the space here and what we are doing at the markets is educating people about what cider is and also learning about how the consumers react to the product. One of the very first things we did was change the bottles; we started putting the cider in beer bottles rather than in wine bottles. We replaced the Champagne cork with a beer capsule—just to pass the message that this is not Apfelwein, this is something else. This is more like beer.
And you travel around to find these different ciders? Sidney: Yeah, my new job is cider scout.
Any interesting stories from your most recent trips? Sidney: In France, 85 percent of cider is drunk in the region, in a five-kilometer radius of where the apples are pressed. It’s a really local product. Even in Paris, cider is drunk on rare occasions. When we launched the project, I started going to the producers, learning about cider and choosing ciders that we felt would work for the German market. People didn’t believe that this was possible, because they don’t even sell to Paris, so why would Germans drink cider? And I remember once I arrived at this farm and the farmer met me at the front gate and he didn’t even say hello, he said, “You will never be able to sell my cider in Germany, they will never drink it.” And he didn’t want to sell it to me.
I’ve had that often, where there is a lot of mistrust, that they are not at ease with the idea of it leaving, and they don’t understand why Germans would be interested. Another supplier I have to give my French address to—I can’t give the German address.
So there was a lot of mistrust at the beginning, and it’s actually taken quite a long time to build up the trust with our suppliers. And now they think it’s quite funny that they sell in their local town and in Berlin. For them it’s a big joke, but then they are also noticing that there is a potential. And that’s how we were able to have a couple of our suppliers start putting the cider in beer bottles. This is something that also isn’t done. For a French market, putting cider in a beer bottle just doesn’t make sense. They are doing it just for us, putting the caps on by hand and we’re the only ones buying it. It’s a small production.
And how many producers and varieties do you offer at the bar? Sidney: We have 20 different varieties coming from 10 or 12 different producers.
What’s the strangest cider you’ve ever tasted? Sidney: Yes. [laughs] Well, the idea with our choice of ciders here is to have a very wide range, whatever cider is different, to show people that cider is complex. It’s not as complex as wine, but you could take three-quarters of the aromas of white wine and that’s what we find in ciders. So there’s a large variety. And we actually have one cider here called Halbi.
Oh, even the name sounds devilish. Leila: This is a fun cider. A true, true farm cider.
Sidney: It’s funny, I even hesitate to sell this to some people. I wouldn’t just sell this to anyone. Even though it’s on the shelf with the price, if someone says, “OK, I’ll take that one,” we’re going to have to talk about it before I will sell this bottle, because it’s not for everyone. You can see just from looking at the bottle, it’s a non-filtered cider.
Oh yeah, it has a lot of funk going on. Leila: Yeah, it’s a chewing cider.
Sidney: But that’s actually just the deposits, because it’s non-filtered. So Halbi, the producer behind this, is only doing a couple hundred bottles a year. And he doesn’t like to see me come, because I buy half his stock. Last time I went, he just upped his price because he doesn’t have much. But it’s true, authentic farm cider. It’s from near Con, a large town in Southern Normandy. And it’s called Halbi, an old Viking name, because it means half-half. Half pear, half apple. It’s non-filtered, non-pasteurized, no added sugars, so the bottle that’s sitting before you right now is alive. It’s fermenting as we speak.
So the longer it sits, the stronger it gets? Sidney: Yeah. I mean, the strongest it can get naturally is 7 percent, at that point there are no more sugars left.
Leila: As it’s fermenting, carbon dioxide gets released, so it’s extremely volatile. You don’t even have to take the foil off and the top starts trembling a bit. You have to be really careful opening it. And of course we opened it and half the bottle goes up and sprays on the ceiling. And, the unpleasant part is, since it’s unfiltered, what you’re left with on the table is a pool of chunky….
Sidney: Bottle vomit. That’s what it looked like. It was impressive. In Normandy, for kids, there is this game of opening the cider bottles. They go out to the back barn and shake the bottles and let it go, and that’s the way it looked here in the middle of the restaurant. I’d say seven-eighths of the bottle came out, in just one shot.
Wow, that must have been a shock for your guests. Sidney: This is why I hesitant to sell this one, since there is this danger that you might not get to drink much of it. But only we have this, because I drive to the farm, I go through the mud, one of their llamas chased me, and they don’t want to sell it to me, I pay double the price. The people I’ll open this for, the people I’ll sell this to is someone who is very motivated about cider. We sold a bottle last week to a guy from Denmark who came down to meet us, and he’s making his own pear cider, so he was really motivated.
And do you have favorite cider? Sidney: [laughs] Leila has a favorite.
Leila: Yeah, well it depends on the day or the mood. I’m a whiskey drinker. We have one called Reserve and it is a cider that’s been aged in Calvados barrels. So it’s a really smooth, and kind of buttery cider. And the bottle is really pretty.
Sidney: It’s a sipping cider. You know, our best sellers are the more beer similar ciders, where if it’s cold, I drink a big bottle myself and it just goes down. Where as this cider, it’s more like end of evening, pour a glass, and just enjoy it. The bubbles are fine and the oak Calvados caskets bring a lot of tannins and flavors notes that remind you of whiskey.
But not all of your products are from France? You also carry some Apfelwein? Sidney: Right now all of the ciders are from France and from Normandy. We have three Apfelweins, two from Austria and one from Frankfurt. And my next cider scout trip is to England to discover what is the difference between French and British cider. Some people have started explaining that to me, and brought in some bottles. So that’s my next trip, hopefully in October, to go learn about English cider.
Awesome, sounds like a lot of fun. And this weekend you are off to Zurich to bring your cider steak to a food festival. Does that come from cows that eat French apples? Sidney: Well that’s the next step. We are in contact with a farmer in France who is doing Wagyu-style beef but with cider, so his cows get a liter of cider a day.
Oh wow, so I wasn’t too far off. Sidney: No, but he only has six cows, so we don’t have his products in right now but that’s coming. But the cider steak is really special.
Leila: So it’s buvette, a French cut, that’s been soaked in cider and some other ingredients for 24 hours and then sous vided for 11 hours. We finish it with onions that have been cooked for 30 hours until they are really gooey and caramelized, mixed with aioli to bring in more fat. And then there is a gastrique and pickled mustard seeds to cut through all the fat.
What else have you found that pairs well with cider? Leila: Well, I guess anything that works well with apples. Caramel, pork, cream. Really rich things pair really well with it.
Sidney: When you think of Normandy, Normandy is cream, cheese, and butter.
Leila: And fish. Fish works because of the sweetness.
Sidney: French cider is like French wine, it’s not made from one apple. There’s at least 10 different apples in the cider, and each apple has it’s own characteristics. So your standard formula is one-third sweet apples, one-third sour apples, and one-third bitter apples. And that balances out and brings a richness and full-bodiness. It’s why it works well with fatty foods and with fish. With fish, you bring out more of the freshness, with the fatty foods you’re going to be focusing more on the bitterness and the freshness to cut through the fat. And then if you’re going to be working on sweeter dishes or more caramel notes than you can go with a sweeter cider. So it can pair with a lot of things.
And that’s why it’s difficult to make, because it’s figuring out the balance of those apples? Sidney: Yeah, because you are using cider apples, which are either very, very sweet or very, very strong in whatever characteristics they have. As they ferment, a sweet apple will become less sweet. Apfelweins in Germany are usually made out of table apples and just one variety. A table apple is perfect for eating; it’s the right sweetness. But when you ferment it, you lose that sweetness. So that’s why a lot of times an Apfelwein can be sour—it’s unbalancing the natural sweetness in the fruit. We do have a selection of Apfelweins here where the producer has chosen his fruit correctly, and where the end product is not sour. It has a balance. But that is a challenge. It’s a real challenge for Apfelweins, and in French cider that’s how they manage it, using these cider apples and then balancing between the three.
Got it. Thanks for speaking with me.
