The Return of Fine Cider

On a late fall day, the production floor at Poverty Lane Orchards in Lebanon, New Hampshire is bustling. A half-dozen seasonal employees from Jamaica grind the apples, press the juice and add yeast. The workers then move the cider to outdoor fermentation tanks, where it sits for as long as 16 months, before bottling and shipping.

Owner Steve Wood began converting his orchards to cider apples twenty years ago. The industry was changing, as inferior apples were being masked by a wax coating, and the demand grew for bigger apples, not the smaller, more flavorful varieties.

"You know, we were growing the same fruit and getting the same praise we had done before, but we weren’t getting as much money, and it was clear we couldn’t keep doing it," Wood said.

New Hampshire Agriculture Commissioner Lorraine Merrill saw two other trends take shape. "First you had the challenge of the cheaper, easily-shipped because they are so hard, Red Delicious apples from Washington State. And then the second wave was Chinese imports of apple juice and cheap apples that took the bottom out of our domestic apple market."

Many apple growers switched to other crops. In two decades the acreage of apple trees in New Hampshire dropped by nearly half, to 2,100. So Wood hatched a plan: recruit other orchard owners to resurrect New England’s long-dormant cider tradition.

"Growers come here and I give them grafting wood, I give them whatever they want to help them get started," Wood said. "We don’t play our cards very close to the breast. I’ll tell anybody exactly what we do and how we do it."

Chuck Souther and his wife operate Apple Hill Farm in Concord, New Hampshire. They started planting trees in 1978. Souther decided about six years ago to take Wood’s advice and convert two acres of his land to growing cider apples, "which was a little bit of a leap of faith," Souther said.

"Almost all the other apples we grow, we can do various things with them. These apples are inedible. They are high in tannin, high in acids, there’s a strong retch factor. When you eat one I liken it to biting into a fresh cranberry."

Souther hopes to be federally licensed to sell fine cider by the end of the winter. But other growers won’t be able to make that leap, Wood says. "They can’t do it because they are so financially strapped that they can’t raise the capital to replant once again."

Despite the odds, Wood envisions New England someday becoming the Napa Valley of artisan cider production. It wouldn’t be unprecedented. It was the drink of choice of American colonists, credited with helping the Revolutionary War soldiers defeat the British, and John Adams was said to consume a tankard a day. In that sense, Wood is like a modern-day Johnny Appleseed. Who, by the way, planted cider apple trees.

"But you know, in truth, I haven’t the damndest idea what Thomas Jefferson was drinking or what John Adams was drinking," Wood said. "We’re not running a museum here. We’re trying to run an orchard."

Wood’s label is called Farnum Hill Ciders. And it’s received favorable reviews in The New York Times and Wine Enthusiast. But distributors have expressed skepticism about the demand for fine cider. And some retailers are placing his bottles on the bottom shelves, alongside Manishevitz.

"It’s a long job to develop a market where there is none," Wood said. "And we, with a few people around, are trying to do that. That is, trying to establish and elevate the category of cider in the wine or the beer market."

That’s why Wood sends employees to hold tastings at grocery stores, like at the Cracker Barrel market in Hopkinton, NH. Carl Goodman found it "dry, sparkling, and a little different. Very drinkable."

Another shopper, Chris Haines, said he’s bought the cider before, and was glad to see it on sale. "It’s a lost art. And it’s really good that they’re bringing it back. With the craft beers and the microbrews coming in, this just fits right along with it."

As American appetites start to shift back toward locally-made beverages, Wood and other New Hampshire apple growers hope customers will consider fine cider a worthy substitute for beer or wine. Perhaps they’ll even prefer it.