, France and Switzerland

Jacques Perritaz was working as a biologist for the Swiss government when he decided to abandon the life of report writing in favour of a career that would bring him closer to nature.

At first, Jacques considered becoming a winemaker, and started working for a few Swiss producers. During his time in the countryside, Jacques noticed old forgotten apple trees scattered in the wild or in small pastures that belonged to people with little interest in using the fruit. Jacques became fascinated with these abandoned trees and in 2000 decided to set up a small cider mill in an old tile factory in Gruyère, and started making cider from foraged fruit.

Jacques works with ancient Swiss apple varieties that are too rare and yield too little fruit for commercial use. The trees are all untreated, and some of them are up to 200 years old.

Over the years Jacques continued to work with orchards in Gruyère but later also sourced rare varieties coming from the German speaking part of Switzerland called Thurgau. Over the years Jacques has made dozens of cuvées that all created an incredible diversity of styles and flavours.

Eventually after many fond memories and with a heavy heart Jacques decided to close the Swiss chapter and move to a place that would allow him to build a truly unique polyculture farm. After searching for the right opportunity Jacques has been settling in his new farm La Prémoudière in Lower Normandy since three years. Despite not working with the same varieties Jacques is discovering new fruit varieties in particular a huge diversity of pears which now create a large part of his collection.