http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/travel/sips-from-a-cider-spree-in-new-york-state.html 2014-09-24 23:30:48 Sips From a Cider Spree in New York State Hitting orchards, shops and restaurants on a decadent tasting tour. === My boots were soaked, and the air reeked of overripe apples. I felt as if I were bathing in the cider I’d come to drink. It was early October and steamy; if the leaves that blazed red from nearly every tree branch were seasonal stop signs, the gods of summer hadn’t seen them. I was a few miles from Cayuga Lake, the second-largest of New York’s 11 Finger Lakes, on a small but extraordinarily prolific orchard. The property’s fruit, which ranged from the palest wash of yellow to grapefruit pink to a purple so dark it looked like a fresh bruise, was hanging all around me and rotting underfoot. Our host, Ian Merwin, ripped a Of the 68 varieties in his orchard, Mr. Merwin, a recently retired Cornell researcher and internationally recognized horticulturist, clearly had his favorites. The novelties, like the Hudson’s, were among them. But there were also other, less glamorous apples. Some of the varieties are hundreds of years old; others were developed by Mr. Merwin himself. They are sharp, tannic or bitter — unfit to be “dessert apples,” as the eating, baking and pick-your-own varieties are dismissively called by cider makers, but perfect for juicing and fermenting. These apples are rare, peculiar, heirloom fruit. They are what I had come for. Though I had a youthful flirtation with cider — accessible labels, like Woodchuck, which I could pick up at the supermarket — I found that as I learned more about the world of drink, I left cider behind. In contrast to the elaborate cocktails and curious craft beers that were suddenly everywhere, the sweet, fizzy, lightly alcoholic stuff I’d been drinking seemed unsophisticated, even childish. But on a trip to the Hudson Valley last year, I was surprised to find ciders on the menus at inventive restaurants and at bars where Woodchuck would have never been welcome. And so last fall, I decided to return to upstate New York to explore the state’s cider scene. It turned out there was a lot to discover. New York, the second-largest apple-growing state in the country after Washington, has long been famous for its apples. It is the home of heirloom varieties like the Over the last decade, a growing number of New York orchards have begun fermenting their own small-batch ciders. In 2011, Glynwood, a local agriculture advocacy nonprofit, introduced Cider Week ( The first scheduled stop was There were children on a pick-your-own field trip and weathered barns decorated with dried corn stalks. A multigenerational family farm, Applewood has survived by dabbling. On top of its farm stand and farmers’ market business, there are wagon rides, puppet shows, live music, even a winery that turns out a dozen or so wines made from In fact, though I didn’t know it at the time, there seems to be something of an inverse correlation between an orchard’s status as a tourist attraction and the quality of its drink. With a couple of exceptions — Mr. Merwin, for instance, normally sells his fruit at farmers’ markets and local restaurants and to fellow cider makers. But once a year, during Cider Week, he opens his Because Mr. Merwin brews them primarily for himself (he has applied for a farm winery license, but the ciders are not yet being distributed), his ciders range from lightly boozy to a nearly wine-level potency. “I like to drink cider, and I like to drink a lot of it,” he said. “That doesn’t work very well if it’s very alcoholic.” The previous night, I indulged in a generous sampling at the Nearby, in a narrow, exposed-brick storefront, Autumn Stoscheck of Ithaca was a decadent couple of days in which cider seemed to appear in every possible form. We had a cider flight with dinner at the too-popular Just a Taste tapas restaurant, where our wait was over an hour. The next day, at Maxie’s Supper Club and Oyster Bar, I ordered a Cider Sidecar of Maker’s Mark, Cointreau, a Finger Lakes Distilling’s Maplejack liqueur and an unspecified local cider before a spectacular three-course cider pairing dinner at Hazelnut Kitchen in Trumansburg. Dishes of sausage and pork loin were followed by a dessert of apple cider doughnut holes, apple compote, candied walnuts and a mulled cider shooter with caramel ice cream. It was an exceptional — and, at $43, reasonably priced — meal that might alone have been worth the five-hour drive from the city. Leaving Ithaca the next day, we drove west on County Road 1, passing rows of concord grapes and Amish wagons with “For Sale” signs. We ate (and drank still more cider) on the deck at Stone Cat, surrounded by weeping willows and a lush garden above Seneca Lake. It was gorgeous, but we still had a full day of driving (Tim) and drinking (me) ahead of us. After a quick brunch, we cut northeast, stopping at the festive 700-acre grounds of By the time we made it to the And when I saw the cider mill — a hulking, noisy Syracuse-made machine that dates from the late 1800s — in action, I was happy to have paid $7.50 per person to park on the farm’s muddy lawn. Workers raked the apple pulp like wet cement, bees buzzed and kids watched with wide eyes. Matthew Critz, who bought the former dairy farm in the 1980s with his wife, Juanita, has kept his son Patrick in the family business by letting him inaugurate the cidery in 2011. Among the nine cider varietals the Critzes, father and son, have developed are three featuring maple syrup. “We’re maple producers and we’re farmers,” Patrick said. “You got to use what you got.” And that too is the old-world way.