Hard cider made from local wild apples to debut at Apple Blossom Festival
BY Jason Emerson
editor
Late last year, Critz Farms Harvest Moon Cidery collected 200 bushels of local wild apples from Cazenovia community members from which to make a unique “community cider.” Now, seven months later, the new cider is bottled and ready for its May 21 release — and cidery owners Matt and Juanita Critz think the result is so good that the limited supply of their creation may not last very long.
“I think it turned out great — great color, great aromatics, great depth of character. All the different apples make for a much more interesting cider,” Matt said.
“I think people will be really excited about it,” Juanita said. “I’ve already had a lot of inquiries.”
The Critz’s community cider project, announced in early September 2015, was created due to the unusually large wild apple crop in Central New York last year, according to Matt. The Critzes thought: Why not ask community members to bring in their wild apples and use those to make a Cazenovia “community” hard cider? Contributors could help press the apples, receive some free bottles of the finished product and even designate a local charity to receive apportion of the proceeds from bottle sales.
“Wild apples make really good hard ciders,” Matt said at the time. “So we thought, if we can get a bunch of people to bring in a lot of apples from all different locations around the community, we’d get a really good cider.”
The project had 35 families and groups contributing anywhere from one to 30 bushels of apples for a total of about 200 bushels collected, which has made two, 200-gallon batches of cider, or approximately 2,000 bottles.
The first 1,000 bottles of the cider were bottled last week, with the rest scheduled for bottling this week. Some of the cider will also be put into kegs and sold on tap at the Harvest Moon Cidery tasting room.
The recipe for the community cider was the same one used for Harvest Moon’s “Four Screw” cider (which is made with a touch of maple syrup), but they used a different yeast to give the cider its own unique flavor. The finished bottle has the Four Screw label, along with a secondary label that says, “Cazenovia Community Cider.”
The raw cider from the community apples had an “interesting, complex character” with a nice tannic structure and was very crisp and refreshing, according to Critz Farms Manager Patrick Allen. Add to that the maple syrup element of the recipe — which is buttery and complex, “the best we’ve ever made” — and the resulting community cider is “the perfect culmination of everything.”
Allen said regular drinkers of the 4 Screw cider will taste the difference, as the community cider is darker, richer and more complex.
“I’m pretty excited about this batch,” Allen said. “The combination of the rich, complex syrup and the cider is spectacular.”
The new 4 Screw Cazenovia Community Cider will be released to the public on May 21, during the Critz Farms third annual Apple Blossom Festival, a free farm event to celebrate the blossoming of the apple orchard trees that will have wagon rides to the orchard, food, live music and multiple family activities.
“We thought this would be the perfect time to highlight the new cider,” Juanita said. “It’s like the kickoff of spring.”
Sales from the Community Cider will benefit three local charities. Based on the input from the community contributors, half of the 50-cents-per-bottle donation will go to Clear Path for Veterans, and the other half will be split between Friends of Lorenzo and Caz Cares.
For more information, visit harvestmooncidery.com.
