The campsite in central Brittany meandered in and around the ruins of a 13th-century castle. While I cooked in its original medieval kitchen, a small older woman fresh from rabbit-hunting entered. She offered me a glass of "cidre" from an unlabelled green bottle, and despite my basic French, I was able to glean that what was passing my lips began life in her small orchard. Strong, dry, and full of ripe fruit, this surely was bough-born champagne. With the sugar peeled away, the subtle complexities of apple were revealed: seeds, skin, leaves, bark, and earth were right there in every sip. When I told her that cider this good cannot be purchased in Canada, she let me know that it couldn't be bought in France either.

I realize that I will never own an apple orchard or a cider press, but after this experience, I refuse to drink high-production cider made from apple-juice concentrate. I got to thinking, How difficult could it be to turn a jug of good-quality apple juice into hard cider? Facing the problem of making something into alcohol, I usually go to Dan Small of Dan's Homebrewing Supplies (310 Commercial Drive). On the way there, I picked up a four-litre jug of unfiltered, organic apple juice for $6. Pointing to the jug I heaved onto the counter, I asked Small, busy grinding barley, for the simplest way to turn its contents into booze. He stopped long enough to suggest pouring in a packet of champagne yeast (99 ¢), then popping in a rubber bung with a fermentation lock ($2.50). In a few weeks it would be about 7.5-percent alcohol, he declared, after taking a hydrometer reading of my apple juice. Then all I would have to do is rack and bottle, tossing in a little corn sugar for carbonation, and in a couple of weeks, I would be ready to party. Small, having achieved an enviable poetic simplicity, is something of the local brewing laureate, but this just seemed too easy, and I had to question him on it.

Despite wanting to get back to his barley mill, he related to me how simple cider is to make. On the farm where he grew up near London, Ontario, each fall his father crushed all of the windfall apples. He threw this mash into an oak barrel where the pulp would settle. "Us kids weren't allowed any of that juice after Halloween," Small recalled with a grin. "By Christmas it would have been fully fermented out." At this point, dad would have to remove a circular pane of ice from the barrel to dip his cup, naturally fortifying the cider as he did so. Small laughs as he tries to figure out how strong the cider would have been by January. "Of course, Mom didn't know."

Small admitted that epicureans might suggest refinements on his suggested brewing method. He mentioned Shirley Warne, who wasn't home when he phoned but who walked in five minutes later, like a muse invoked.

While Small continued milling barley, I spoke with Warne, a slight but intense woman with spiky silver hair. Despite branding herself a "neophyte", she demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of cider-brewing.

Her method involves a little more equipment (although no oak barrels) and a few more steps. She usually brews six jugs (about 24 litres) per batch, pouring all into a sterilized primary fermenter with a loose-fitting lid that allows for some headroom. Warne finds champagne yeast overly efficient, as it tends to ferment out every last speck of sugar; her preference is a more finicky Swiss ale yeast for the flavour it imparts and the residual sweetness it leaves.

She lets the primary run for about a week at 15 º C, racking it into a 23-litre carboy once it is no longer active, then adds a teaspoon of powdered gelatin to help the yeast to "flocculate" (brewer's talk for "sink to the bottom"), then lets this secondary fermentation sit somewhere cool (eight to 12 º C) for a month, after which it is usually ready to bottle.

Warne eschews carbonating with corn sugar, preferring the German technique of "krausening", which involves adding a small amount (eight percent of the total volume) of fresh juice, which may be inoculated with a pinch of yeast, back to the newly fermented cider. This, she said, will give it a softer carbonation, which is smoother on the palette, and a cider you cannot buy here, or anywhere, for ready money.