Cider With A Kick: The fermented apple drink makes a comeback
By Jennifer Snelling
For The Register-Guard
Published: Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Leaves are turning, a chill is in the air and pumpkins are appearing on doorsteps. All are sure signs that it's time for apple cider. I don't mean that syrupy drink found in children's juice boxes, fizzy imitation champagne or apple juice warmed on the stove with a cinnamon stick. I'm talking about hard apple cider.

Lightly alcoholic fermented apple juice, or apple cider, is enjoying a revival in American culture. And Oregon is catching on quickly. While the state is well known for world-class wines, it is also home to award-winning hard ciders. America's love affair with local, authentic, artisanal food and drink is encouraging cider producers such as Nick Gunn from Wandering Aengus Ciderworks in Salem. There's a world of difference between artisan cider and one made from apple concentrate and artificial sweeteners, he says. Once people have tried true cider, they're sold.

In the United States, the word cider often refers to sweet cider, or freshly expressed juice. The hard stuff - fermented apple juice known as hard apple cider - is simply called cider in Europe. As if the terminology isn't confusing enough, cider has similarities to both wine and beer, although it is neither.

Like wine, it is fermented from fruit and can capture the complex flavors of a fruit. But if you expect the smooth-mouth feel of wine when tasting cider, you'll be disappointed.

Like beer, cider generally has less than 7 percent alcohol and often has some sparkle, but the aggressive tang of apple-based cider is nothing like the mellowness of grain-based beer. Hard ciders are available sparkling or still, and range in taste from bone dry to extremely sweet.

You may have noticed that an apple left on the ground to rot will begin to ferment by itself. Natural cider relies on the wild yeast present in apples for fermentation; nothing else is needed. The process takes about a year and the cider should be consumed within three years.

Good cider starts from spitters

Although much of today's cider is made from apple concentrate, traditional cider makers use only cider apples, cultivated specifically for that purpose.

Highly acidic heirloom apples are the stuff of Pacific Northwest craft ciders - apples such as Brown Snout, Foxwhelp and Sops of Wine 4. Sharp, crisp and bitter, cider apples are not exactly Red Delicious. Kristin Ford of Ford Farms Cyderworks on Sauvie Island, northwest of Portland, says that the best cider apples are spitters, the very apples you'd rather not eat - just savor briefly, then spit.

The high tannins and acidity of cider apples taste nothing like the familiar lunch-box fruit, but are prerequisites for good cider. In fermentation, the bitterness and acidity of the apples make an exceptional cider.

Before Ford and her husband, Rich, began making cider for distribution in 2000, they experimented with Granny Smiths and other grocery store apples. The cider was awful, she says. With cider, like wine, it's all about the fruit. As many as 40 different types of apples can be combined to make one cider. The Fords maintain an orchard of 5,000 trees, which includes nearly 40 varieties of old American, English and French apples.

Stores such as Whole Foods and New Seasons Market in Portland have hosted cider tastings featuring cider produced in Oregon. Ford says that at first, tasters were expecting something similar to Martinelli's Sparkling Cider, but now people are more familiar with traditional ciders.

There are so many more products available locally, Ford says. And people understand more about cider than they did five years ago. It helps that cider is now on the menu at some of the nation's most exclusive restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern in New York City and Wildwood Restaurant in Portland.

Reviving a tradition

Hard cider was once the most popular beverage in America. Brought over by French and English colonists in the 1800s, every man, woman and child drank it. Milk was expensive and in short supply. Water, dug from shallow wells sometimes a little too close to the barnyard, could be dicey.

During the presidential campaign of 1840, William Henry Harrison offered free cider to anyone who voted for him. It became known as the "cider campaign" and Harrison won the election by a landslide.

The increasing popularity of beer, followed by Prohibition, caused cider to all but disappear from the American landscape. But gone are the days when cider was nothing more than a curiosity drink.

The Boston Beer Company, which makes Samuel Adams, also produces HardCore Crisp Hard Cider. Oregon's drink empire McMenamins makes a cider that's served on tap at all of its pubs. McMenamins started by making 200 gallons of cider in 1990, and now it's fermenting 2,000 gallons a year.

Many of the most interesting ciders are made by small producers. Educating the public about craft cider is the mission of Cider Oregon, a new nonprofit organization started by the state's three craft cider producers Ford Farm Cyderworks, Blue Mountain Cider Company and Wandering Aengus Ciderworks.

Robbi Swinnerton of Blue Mountain Cider Company in Milton-Freewater is new to the business. Since opening in April of 2004, she says demand for cider has only increased. Mimi Casteel of Wandering Aengus Ciderworks agrees, but thinks cider is more than just a trend. Cider makers are helping to re-create an American artisan cider tradition, she says.

The good news for Eugene residents is that the tradition is coming to us. Wandering Aengus Ciderworks has recently begun to distribute here.

This is especially exciting for Gunn, who owns Wandering Aengus with his wife, Casteel. He grew up in Eugene and graduated from South Eugene High School and the University of Oregon.

Gunn compares the current growth of Oregon's cider industry to the state's wine industry in the 1970s. Casteel's parents own Bethel Heights Vineyard, and originally the couple was planning to grow wine grapes. But they saw a niche for cider apples as well as a demand for quality cider. The couple decided instead to buy the Traditional Co., which had been producing ciders since 2000. They have since won second place at the Bath and West cider competition in England for their dry champagne cider. They have opened the first cider tasting room in the Northwest, located next door to Bethel Heights. The response has been wonderful, Gunn said.

"Originally we were battling people's preconceptions about cider being sickly sweet and syrupy. But now people get it and are seeking out good, quality cider," he said.

Now is the best time to hunt for it, with new ciders just coming onto market. And what could be more perfect on a crisp fall day than the tangy, clean taste of apples?