The apple that gave Almaty its name.

A family orchard above Talgar, growing the legendary Aport and pressing the windfalls into honest juice and cider.

Picked by hand, sold from the gate. Three generations on the same sunlit slope, doing one thing properly — growing apples worth the climb.

The apple

Aport — the giant of the foothills

Fist-sized, deep crimson, and faintly wine-like, the Aport made Almaty famous. It needs cool mountain nights and warm days to colour and sweeten — exactly what our slope above Talgar gives it.

Aport sweet, aromatic, keeps till midwinter
Sary Sinap tall golden cellar apple, crisp
Antonovka bright and tart, best for the press
Limonka small, late, sweetens in the cold store

From the press

Nothing good goes to waste

The imperfect fruit never gets thrown out — it goes under the press the same afternoon it falls. What we don't bottle, we dry or turn over to the bees.

Pressed juice cloudy and unfiltered
Dry cider small barrel batches
Dried apple sun and mountain air
Blossom honey from hives in the rows

“At eleven hundred metres the nights are cold and the apples take their time. You can taste the mountain in them.”
— Bekzat, third-generation orchardist

A year on the slope