Featured Cider Makers
Cider School #7: Pét-Nat Cider 101 with Lyndon Smith of Botanist and Barrel (Thurs., May 14, at 6 p.m. ET)
It’s time for school — Cider School, that is! This week, we’re back with what’s bound to be a super-fun session all about pét-nat cider, led by Lyndon Smith, the founder and COO of Botanist and Barrel Cidery & Winery in Cedar Grove, North Carolina. Farming and winemaking run in Lyndon’s blood. He grew up…
Read MoreIt Runs in the Family: Q&A with Son-and-Mom Team Behind Old Stone Cider
This feature was published before the COVID-19 pandemic forced closures across the county. Old Stone Cider is currently available through online ordering, and takeout is available at its cider house on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. November will mark Old Stone Cider’s fourth anniversary, and the Gruber family certainly has plenty to celebrate. Since they starting…
Read MoreCider Culture Virtual Happy Hour #8: Co-Hosted with Peter Gillitzer of Milk & Honey Ciders (Friday, May 8, 5 p.m. ET)
We’re back for our eighth Friday Cider Culture Zoom happy hour! This week, we’ll be hanging with Peter Gillitzer of Milk & Honey Ciders, a Minnesota-based producer of American cider made from heirloom and traditional cider apple cultivars. Milk & Honey’s farmhouse cidery and orchard focus on interesting, dry, highly aromatic and tannic ciders made…
Read MoreCider Culture Virtual Happy Hour #7: Co-Hosted with Andrew Byers of Finnriver Farm & Cidery (Friday, May 1, 5 p.m. ET)
It’s kind of hard to believe, but we’re coming up on our seventh Cider Culture Friday virtual happy hour! What started as a grasp for connection and community during the first weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak in the US has now become for us an energizing weekly tradition and soul-sustaining social engagement. Getting to “meet”…
Read MoreCider Culture Virtual Happy Hour #6: Co-Hosted with Dean Landi of St. Vrain Cidery (Friday, April 24, 5 p.m. ET)
Can you believe we’re talking about our sixth virtual happy hour? Yes, it’s been six long, strange weeks since the world more or less paused to slow the spread of COVID-19, and virtual hangouts like these have really kept us going! This Friday, join us to raise a glass to another week in the books…
Read MoreCider School #2: Barrels 101 with Corrie Wolosin of Virtue Cider (Thurs., April 9)
Our next session of Cider School is all about the barrel! Led by Corrie Wolosin of Virtue Cider, “Barrels 101” will cover some basics of barrel-aging cider, with topics like: How to pick barrels for aging How best to get the cider in and out How barrels makes ciders even more special Specifically how Virtue…
Read MoreQ&A with Christian Annese of Armageddon Brewing
There are so many challenges to starting a new cidery. Of course, one must perfect the process and the product, assemble a team, find a space, raise the capital for equipment and the endless other startup costs …. it only proves, even more, the passion and dedication behind all of the cideries that we know…
Read MoreSon of Man: An Oregonian Homage to Spanish Cider
Wild, unexpected, untamed, complex … these are just a few of the words we’ve heard people use to describe Son of Man‘s Sagardo cider. Funnily enough, it’s the same palate-electrifying, head-scratching experience that this Oregon-based cidery’s founder, Jasper Smith, had when he first tried Basque cider, a moment that would change the course of his…
Read More6 Solar-Powered Cideries
At its core, cider is an agricultural product. Without healthy land and productive orchards, this beverage that we love so much isn’t a possibility. Whether a cider maker is growing their own fruit or sourcing from nearby farms, they understand as well as anyone who is making a living off fruits and vegetables, the true…
Read MoreCider Travels: Drinking Cider in Charlottesville, Virginia
Cider drinkers owe a great debt to Virginia. As the site of the first permanent settlement in the New World, early settlers quickly planted apple trees so they could make hard cider, since barley and hops for beer were much more difficult to cultivate. Years later, some of the most important people in Virginia’s —…
Read MoreJack’s Hard Cider to Open New, Expanded Production Space and Taproom in Gettysburg, PA
Jack’s Hard Cider is making some big moves this year: The well-known Pennsylvania cider brand is leaving its pretty hilltop tasting room in rural Cashtown, PA to a grand space in The Outlet Shoppes in Gettysburg. Its new home will be a 36,000-square-foot former movie theater, which will allow for a large production facility and…
Read MoreLearn About Pét-Nat Ciders with Botanist & Barrel
Pét-nat: What is it and why is it popping up on bottles of wine and cider everywhere? Besides from being a fun phrase to say, it’s really a description of a method that can create carbonation in alcoholic beverages without the addition of extra yeast and sugar. For wine or cider to be bubbly, most…
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