10-FOLD CORTLAND APPLE CONCRETE

2025 HARVEST · BARRE, VERMONT

tart Cortland apple · red apple skin · brown-sugared flesh · cider · caramel · apple brandy · honeysuckle · apple butter

This is my 10-fold in-house concrete of organic Cortland apples from my family's tiny Vermont orchard, made from the 2025 harvest of trees more than forty years old.

I repeatedly charged the extraction with fresh apple material ten times, concentrating one harvest through successive extractions into an aromatic record of Cortland / this orchard / this year.

The Cortland itself dates to 1898, when the cultivar was raised from a cross between McIntosh and Ben Davis. In our old family trees, I am interested not only in the cultivar but in the particular harvest: the same tree does not make precisely the same aromatic fruit every year.

2025 had a distinct growing season in central Vermont.

Spring flowering arrived through cool, cloudy, showery weather. The wetness of May then gave way to a much drier June and a warm summer, followed by periods of water stress in Vermont orchards as the fruit approached ripening.

I think of this concrete as an aromatic record of fruit that developed through that particular sequence—not an abstract “apple” note, but Cortland / this orchard / this harvest / this year.

The aroma retains the variety's mouthwatering contrast between acidity and sweetness.

First comes tart, juicy Cortland flesh and the slightly tannic perfume of red apple skin: crisp, rosy, aqueous, almost winey.

Then the fruit seems to have been cut open and warmed.

The flesh darkens toward Vermont apple crisp, brown sugar soaking into the juice. Fresh apple gives way to cider; cider deepens toward apple brandy. Caramel appears around the edges. A soft floral thread recalls honeysuckle, while the deepest part smells of fruit cooked slowly past sauce into apple butter—concentrated, russeted, almost spicy.

What fascinates me is the tension between those states remaining present at once:

fresh flesh / red skin / cider / brandy / caramel / preserved fruit

The concrete itself looks like that transformation made visible: translucent cider-gold, burnt orange and Cortland-red, with pale, delicate plates forming across its surface like thin apple skin, wax or fractured amber.

Made from one Vermont harvest through ten successive charges of fruit, then released a year later, the 2025 Cortland Apple Concrete is both raw material and archive.

The fruit is gone. The harvest remains.

AROMA: tart Cortland flesh · red apple skin · apple crisp · brown sugar · cider · caramel · apple brandy · honeysuckle · apple butter

☽•☾ Wild Veil never uses heat, steam, or non-organic solvents, all of which can alter the natural aroma profiles of plants ☽•☾