Greetings Cider Pioneers!

Continuing our series of monthly Threadbare development team updates, this month's newsletter features the production team's recent field trip to Geneva, New York, where they completed a workshop hosted by Cornell University's agricultural extension program. There were apple analyses, orchard visits, and a heck of a lot of cider variety tastings. In other words, the perfect environment to nerd out excessively about apples. 

Below is a letter from David Harries, Head Cider Maker, about the experience- which brought us many steps closer to opening the doors of Threadbare Cider. 

Stay tuned for taste panelist call-outs and invitations!
 

A note from David:

Things are moving along in cider-development-land. We just got back from a week-long trip to the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, N.Y., put on by Cornell University in the beautiful Finger Lakes. 

Geneva’s a five-hour drive from Pittsburgh, and we spent a good many hours along Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, cruising past tons of vineyards and orchards. During our class, we learned that New York is the nation’s second-leading producer of apples, behind Washington State. We certainly saw our fair share. And many of the apple trees were blooming. On the drive east, we stopped at a couple of cider producers, and were graciously shown around the grounds at LynOaken farms by Chris Oakes, who oversees a few hundred acres of fruit, including five acres of dedicated hard-cider apple varieties. These cider apples are called “spitters,” because they are so astringent and acidic you take one bite and go, “pitooey”. But they make a fantastic product, once fermented — and once mature — it can take upward of five years for a tree to enter full production. He also shared a bottle of remarkable quince cider with us.

In Geneva, we learned much from Cornell faculty and staff, as well as a few visiting professors and lecturers. Some of the most enlightening sessions centered around learning how to use lab equipment and techniques to determine the juice metrics, such as amount of titratable acidity and sulfite. We also spent some time tasting commercial examples of hard cider, and in one particularly memorable session, exploring cider flaws: things you should never find in your glass — one of which is mousiness! 

The highlight of the trip may have been visiting Autumn and Ezra at their business, Eve’s Cidery, in Van Etten, NY. We had the pleasure of having Eve to the Distillery this past year when she visited Pittsburgh and we were excited to see her stomping grounds. She and her husband make exceptional cider on their orchard, and we had the chance to catch them at the end of a day bottling and shared dinner together. Their cider is an expression of the land, the apples they grow, and the extraordinary lengths they go to ensure that the product is as purely apple as possible. To that end, they disgorge the yeast from their sparking ciders, in the Champagne fashion. Remarkably labor intensive, it’s awesome to see.

David Harries
Head Cider Maker