Cider loses ‘sweet’ stigmaCider loses ‘sweet’ stigma

Stephen Beaumont

Back in the late 1990s the buzz on the street was that the next big thing in beverage, following the inevitable slowing of the craft-beer boom, was going to be cider. Not the cloudy stuff you buy at farmers markets, mind you, but the crisp, tart, alcoholic drink known as hard cider.


It never really happened. The craft-beer boom just kept on booming, and most people forgot about the nascent rush to the cider market. Some hard-cider brands found limited success and continued to grow their market share through the early years of the 21st century, but for the most part cider fizzled.


Until now, that is. The buzz surrounding cider is back, and this time it seems like it might be for real.


“Over the last 1 1/2 years we’ve seen substantial growth in our cider sales,” said Polly Watts, owner of Avenue Pub in New Orleans. From selling next to nothing two years ago, Watts reported the bar now goes through two to three kegs and a case of canned cider per week, and she aims to continue that growth.


“I used to think that cider was all this sweet, fizzy stuff,” Watts said, noting that many are actually dry and complex in character.


“My hunch is that really dry cider is going to be like traditional lambic beer used to be: a really hard sell at first, but then very popular,” she said.


Making cider popular was very much on the mind of Jeff Smith when he opened Bushwhacker Cider in Portland, Ore. Both cider producer and pub, Bushwhacker’s mission from the day it opened in September 2010 has been to promote cider and grow the category as a whole, Smith said.


“A lot of places treat cider like the poor cousin to beer,” he said. “We wanted to take it out of the corner and show how great it can really be.”


Bushwhacker stocks every cider available in Oregon on six taps and in a number of refrigerators, which Smith admitted can be “pretty overwhelming.” For that reason, he said, staff training is very important.


When customers new to cider arrive at the pub, Smith said the best way to figure out which brand might best appeal to them is by finding out what they like in beer or wine. Once that is ascertained, it becomes relatively simple to guide them to the right cider.


“We ask things like, ‘Do you like fruity tastes, sweet tastes, berry, funky, dry?’ and so on,” Smith said. “Once we know what kind of flavors they like, we can recommend a similar structure in a cider.”


As for cider’s long-term popularity, Smith simply pointed to the recently held Cider Summit in Portland, a one-day event that drew 1,300 people and featured 73 different international ciders. With a response like that, and in craft beer’s premier urban market, no less, it seems almost certain that this cider boom is destined to hang on for awhile. 

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