Sips from a cider spree

( China Daily ) Updated: 2015-04-18 09:37:44

Sips from a cider spree

Farmers market in Ithaca. [Photo/Agencies]

Merwin, for instance, normally sells his fruit at farmers' markets and local restaurants and to fellow cider makers. But once a year, during Cider Week, he opens his Black Diamond Farm (named in honor of one of the state's last coal-powered locomotives, which ran on a nearby track that's now being converted to a rail trail; blackdiamondtrail.org) to the public for an orchard walk. Ours culminated with a delicious, messy six-apple pie and homemade cider-still and sparkling-poured from unlabeled bottles into plastic cups.

Because Merwin brews them primarily for himself (he has applied for a farm winery license, but the ciders are not yet being distributed), his ciders range from lightly boozy to a nearly wine-levelpotency. "I like to drink cider, and I like to drink a lot of it," he said. "That doesn't work very well if it's very alcoholic."

The previous night, I indulged in a generous sampling at the Cellar d'Or, a stylish specialized shop in downtown Ithaca, focusing exclusively on New York ciders and wines. There, Bill Barton, the owner of Bellwether Hard Cider, who has a popular tasting room outside town (one of the few that isn't a side course in a larger, pick-your-own, agritourism spectacle), explained the conundrum of fermentation. It "giveth alcohol," he said, "but taketh fruit"-meaning the flavor of the fruit. For his Cherry Street, which he calls his "heresy cider," he uses a technique shunned by many serious cider makers: He adds Montmorency cherries, post-fermentation.

Nearby, in a narrow, exposed-brick storefront, Autumn Stoscheck of Eve's Cidery poured some ice cider inspired by a visit to Quebec. It was sweet and strong and unlike anything I'd tasted-a concentrated bite of the 30 or so apples that Stoscheck said went into its 375-milliliter bottle.

Her Autumn's Gold, meanwhile, was a dry, sparkling cider that used French and English bittersweet apples and a Champagne method. Deva Maas and Eric Shatt, from the mom-and-pop Redbyrd Cidery, talked about gathering wild apples for their cider because they're acidic and hardy. "If there's a tree we've been going to for years, we'll propagate it," Maas said. "It's the 'old-world way.' "

Ithaca was a decadent couple of days in which cider seemed to appear in every possible form. We had a cider flight with dinner at the too-popular Just a Taste tapas restaurant, where our wait was over an hour. The next day, at Maxie's Supper Club and Oyster Bar, I ordered a Cider Sidecar of Maker's Mark, Cointreau, a Finger Lakes Distilling's Maplejack liqueur and an unspecified local cider before a spectacular three-course cider pairing dinner at Hazelnut Kitchen in Trumansburg.

Dishes of sausage and pork loin were followed by a dessert of apple cider doughnut holes, apple compote, candied walnuts and a mulled cider shooter with caramel ice cream. It was an exceptional-and, at $43, reasonably priced-meal that might alone have been worth the five-hour drive from the city.

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