Christian Miller (CMM)
Christian Miller
Quick unedited thoughts on the cider thing.
I drink cider fairly often. I think it matches well with a wide variety of dishes (but not anything involving tomatoes or olives) and is actually superior to most wines with strong or unsubtle cheeses.
Cider is one of the "is it the next big thing?" products in the trade, with both a host of crafty producers springing up and some big companies heavily investing. Still, it's pretty amazing to see an all-cider premise, even in NYC. I look forward to visiting.
The American hard cider-producing tradition withered away in the 20th century, and there are no established expectations of what cider should taste like. We're presented with a riot of very different styles: stuff that tastes like apple beer, funky bretty rustic to ripe appley fruit, austere verjus-like products and synthetic-tasting soda-cider.
I'm surprised by how dry and how lacking in fruit are many of the new wave of craft ciders. Sweet fruit balanced with tangy acid are the hallmarks of fresh apples, so it's somewhat jarring. It's like the IPAzation of cider, and I don't think it's going to make a lot of converts. If the larger commercial brands go sweet (I've only had a few of them and they varied), then cider might end up with the artificial and annoying "good wines=dry, bad wines=sweet" bifurcation that burdened the wine category for years.
I suspect some of this is related to the background or tastes of the domestic craft producers being more rooted in beer than wine or Norman cider. I wish more domestic producers would emulate the Norman model, where you can find both good appley fruit and complexity, in sweet (or at least demi-sec) and dry ciders. For that matter, I wish more of the Norman producers were imported and distributed here.
I drink cider fairly often. I think it matches well with a wide variety of dishes (but not anything involving tomatoes or olives) and is actually superior to most wines with strong or unsubtle cheeses.
Cider is one of the "is it the next big thing?" products in the trade, with both a host of crafty producers springing up and some big companies heavily investing. Still, it's pretty amazing to see an all-cider premise, even in NYC. I look forward to visiting.
The American hard cider-producing tradition withered away in the 20th century, and there are no established expectations of what cider should taste like. We're presented with a riot of very different styles: stuff that tastes like apple beer, funky bretty rustic to ripe appley fruit, austere verjus-like products and synthetic-tasting soda-cider.
I'm surprised by how dry and how lacking in fruit are many of the new wave of craft ciders. Sweet fruit balanced with tangy acid are the hallmarks of fresh apples, so it's somewhat jarring. It's like the IPAzation of cider, and I don't think it's going to make a lot of converts. If the larger commercial brands go sweet (I've only had a few of them and they varied), then cider might end up with the artificial and annoying "good wines=dry, bad wines=sweet" bifurcation that burdened the wine category for years.
I suspect some of this is related to the background or tastes of the domestic craft producers being more rooted in beer than wine or Norman cider. I wish more domestic producers would emulate the Norman model, where you can find both good appley fruit and complexity, in sweet (or at least demi-sec) and dry ciders. For that matter, I wish more of the Norman producers were imported and distributed here.
