How many different apples can you name? Most folks can count the list with their fingers. What if we told you that there are over 2,500 apple varieties grown in the United States and more than 7,500 varieties grown world-wide, each one different in flavor and appearance? Pretty wild right?! 

 

The reality is that the grocery store apple varieties that most folks are familiar with are chosen more for their looks than their flavor (talking to you, Red Delicious). Marketing folks know that people want their apples to look a certain way and tend to stay away from anything off-colored, small, oddly-shaped, etc. We want to liberate you from their tyranny! While some of the apples available at the grocery store taste great (good enough for us to use in our blends), there is a whole world of funky, ugly, delicious apples out there. These are the apples we are interested in and the apples we think you should try. Keep scrolling to see some of the apples we use in our cider.

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Our cider starts with Virginia-grown apples that are picked at their peak, washed, crushed, and pressed for their juice. This juice is transferred to temperature-controlled tanks where the natural sugars in the juice are consumed by yeast and fermented into alcohol. After about a month's time the yeast has consumed all available sugar and the young cider is transferred to storage containers to mature for a few months to a year or more. After maturation, the cider is transferred to a pressure tank where it is carbonated before it is bottled or kegged. Finally, it reaches its final destination: your tastebuds. 

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Many of our ciders are "dry". This means that all available fermentable sugar in the apple juice has been fermented and converted into alcohol, leaving behind no residual sugar (another term you might hear when folks talk about wine or cider sweetness). If you have not tried a dry wine or cider before, this may sound off-putting, but rest assured, lack of sugar does not equal lack of flavor complexity or perceived sweetness. Often sugary sweetness actually obscures interesting flavors.

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Dry cider not your thing? That's just fine by us. We don't discriminate, and we have a cider for every palate. Let our servers know your preference and they will offer you suggestions to meet what you are looking for and help you try something new!