No one is sure when or where it began or who discovered that fermenting apple juice was delicious, but 3,000 years ago there were apple trees along the Nile River, and the Egyptians were notable beer and wine drinkers. After the Romans found cider in Britain in 55 BC, large scale production really took off.

In early America it was the drink of choice. Benjamin Franklin said, “It’s indeed bad to eat apples; it’s better to turn them all into cider.” William Henry Harrison won the 1840 presidential election as the “Log Cabin and Hard Cider Candidate,” and gave out free cider to his supporters. John Adams started his day with a tankard of cider and lived to be 90 years old.

Yes, there are some health benefits to drinking cider regularly, though, at 3 to 12 percent alcohol, drinking a daily breakfast tankard isn’t recommended in this article. All real cider, hard and not, is produced by crushing whole apples. It contains lots of Vitamin C for the immune system and more antioxidants than tomatoes or green or black tea to fight free radicals. It’s 100 percent juice, unlike processed apple juice at the grocery store; it has no fat or gluten; it has no cholesterol and, in fact, contains pectin which reduces cholesterol. There is no added sugar in real cider, but there is a substantial amount of natural sugar, and one 8-ounce glass is about 110 calories.

Ancient ciders were made with crabapples making them tart and bittersweet. As exploration and trade ensued across Europe and parts east, more common, sweeter apple varieties were shared, cultivated, and utilized to produce this popular alcoholic beverage. Today, with 7,500 varieties of apples available, new generations of family farmers have rediscovered heirloom and cider apples and are also making hard cider from culinary apples like Golden Delicious and Gala.

Rochester is surrounded by multi-generational fruit farms, and many specialize in apples. If they don’t make their own cider, they likely sell to people who do make it, creating opportunities all around us to drink local, smaller production ciders. I recently visited some cideries within a 45-minute drive of the South Wedge and tasted some of their specialties.

For 100 years Schutt’s Apple Mill, 1063 Plank Rd., has been growing apples in Webster. Known for its sweet, fresh-pressed cider, fourth-generation great-grandson Evan Schutt began making hard cider two years ago. Their store has a new, expanded tasting room that also carries other local ciders to try. Schutt’s own Fried Cake cider is “fall” in a glass with familiar seasonal spices over apples and a fried cake flavor finish. This is sweet—a dessert or holiday cider for grown-ups—and made with Ida Reds, Empire, and Rome apples. Schutt’s more traditional offering is Great Grandpa’s Grog “Relic.” It’s light and refreshing with an off-dry finish. Made from Crispin and Pinata apples, the flavors are more subtle, balanced, and classic, slightly tart.

Also east of Rochester, in Williamson, Rootstock Ciderworks, 3274 Eddy Rd., was founded by David DeFisher in 2012. Rootstock is part of DeFisher Fruit Farms, which harvests 500 acres of orchards and is in its fifth generation of family farmers. The cidery uses all-natural local ingredients and is the first post-Prohibition farmstead cidery in the region. The tasting room is beautiful with an indoor tasting bar and outdoor seating. The 2017 Heritage, made from Rhode Island Greening apples, is fresh with a clear apple taste, a hint of pear, and a slight floral finish. The 2016 Legend Barrel-Aged is made from a blend of heirloom apples and aged for at least a year in French and American oak barrels. It’s whiskey-like in its complexity and character: apples with some dark spice and leather, a fall and winter sipper. The 2017 Rose is a lovely blend of Rhode Island Greening and Cortland apples and the Austrian Blaufrankisch grape (sourced from Leonard Oakes Winery.) Slightly effervescent, it’s wine-like with flavors of strawberry, red berries, and melon with a dry finish.

On the west side of Rochester, Blue Barn Cidery, 928 Manitou Rd. in Hilton, was established in 2017, but is part of a 200-year old family farm business currently known as Green Acres and West Wind Fruit Farms. The facility itself, the Blue Barn, is marketed for weddings and events. On the Sunday I was there, at least three parties were going on simultaneously. There is a large tasting bar that also offers other beverages from area wineries and breweries. I tasted three Blue Barn ciders. The Westcider, a blend of six apples, had a very slight floral note to it, but was otherwise not distinctive. The Jostaberry Jam, which the server said was the most popular cider, was sweet with currant flavors and reminded me of red fruit punch. The Pop the Bubbly cider was supposed to be slightly effervescent and have a “Champagne” quality. Unfortunately, this taster may have been open too long because it was flat and had an unpleasant minerality. Perhaps they are still experimenting with flavors and fermenting, but, overall, these samples lacked the complexity of many other ciders that I’ve tried.

All three cideries produce all-natural beverages using home-grown and local-grown ingredients, including other fruits from their orchards and farms. For more information, visit their Facebook pages or websites: www.schuttsapplemill.com, www.rootstockciderworks.com, and www.bluebarncidery.com.

This article appears in the October/November 2019 issue of The WEDGE newspaper

Red Tail Ridge vineyards overlooking Seneca Lake. The winery is sustainably farmed and was New York’s first LEED Gold Certified winery.

This article was published in The Wedge Newspaper, February-March 2019 issue.

There is a genre of “natural” wines. Not only are the farms (vineyards and wineries) usually organic, sustainable, or biodynamic, but the methods in which their wines are produced are traditional with little intervention by the winemaker.

While this movement is becoming trendy, the “natural wine movement” began in France about 40 years ago as a protest of sorts to modern, mass-produced, industrialized wines with homogenized flavors. Old World winemakers thought that grapes were being manipulated for the popular palate rather than allowing the grape’s true character to develop in the barrel and in the bottle. Of course, the techniques and methods of natural wine weren’t new 40 years ago, either, having been used and finessed over centuries of winemaking prior to that.

If a bottle is labeled “unfiltered,” “unfined,” “natural,” or “minimal intervention,” it is probably considered a natural wine. There is no formal designation or certification as there is with organic or biodynamic products, or as with the farm produce designation “Certified Naturally Grown.” The general criteria followed by wine organizations and producers include: grapes are hand-picked from low-yield vineyards; there are no additives---no sugar, no cultured yeasts, no artificial flavors or colors; minimal or no filtration; no added sulfites (or only a minute amount) as a preservative.

Because of the hands-off techniques involved, the wines often look different from the other wines on the shelf. They may be cloudy and have sediment resting at the bottom. In tasting, natural wines often have yeasty, earthy or funky flavors because of the natural elements like sediment still present in the bottle.

One type of natural wine is petillant naturel, or “pet nat.” These are interesting sparkling wines produced in the methode ancestrale which pre-dates methode champenoise, the most common technique for making sparkling wine. In methode champenoise additional yeast and sugar are added to wine in the bottle for a second fermentation that produces bubbles (carbon dioxide.) Pet nat wines are bottled before the first fermentation is complete, and no additional yeast or sugar is added. The CO2 by-product remains in the bottle and creates bubbles which also vary in intensity, but are softer on the palate than methode Champenoise bubbles. Pet nats are generally low-alcohol, easy to drink, and can be red, white, or rose.

Pet nats are intriguing because each bottle can develop in its own way, even those bottled at the same time. It is not unusual for flavors, bubbles, and texture to vary with factors like temperature, amount of yeast, and aging. Winemakers generally like the challenge of bringing out grape characteristics with minimal intervention, leaving the primary juice and indigenous yeast to make its own magic.

We recently visited the Finger Lakes to taste some of these original effervescent wines.

Red Tail Ridge Winery (www.redtailridgewinery.com) on Seneca Lake has produced seven vintages of Petillant Naturel Riesling. A natural wine making process is a logical option for New York’s first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certified winery. Red Tail Ridge farms sustainably, controls pests humanely, and keeps production low to focus on quality.

For winery co-owner and winemaker Nancy Irelan, a self-proclaimed “bubbles fanatic,” pet nat wine is an “approachable sparkling wine with a shorter time in production and a friendly price point” encouraging and allowing people to drink sparkling wine more often than special occasions.

Their 2017 Peillant Naturel Riesling was on the tasting bar. With a little cloudiness and visible sediment, it’s light and refreshing. It’s citrusy, with grapefruit and lemon flavors, then a strawberry finish. Also available is Red Tail Ridge’s 2018 Pinot Noir Rose Petillant Naturel.

Natural wines are part of Barry Family Cellars’ (www.barryfamilywines.com) philosophy and style. Located in Burdett a few miles from the east shore of Seneca Lake, they purchase grapes locally and produce small batches with “minimal intervention” to “showcase individual vineyards.” Many of their wines are also unfined and unfiltered. Winemaker Ian Barry says the traditional roots of methode ancestrale appeals to him. We tasted four that he has produced.

The first was Fossil & Till Riesling 2017 Petillant Naturel, a limited edition, special project for Barry. Light and refreshing, there was a slight herbal quality with the citrusy flavors. The second wine was their latest pet nat, the 2018 Cayuga “Pet Gnat” Petillant Naturel. This was an opportunity to taste a very young wine that is still fermenting. Cayuga is a white hybrid created at Cornell University, and these grapes in particular were certified organic. At this stage, as expected, it was a bit heavier with yeasty flavors. It will be interesting to see what flavors emerge as this continues aging.

We tried the Pinot Noir Rose “Pet Gnat” 2017 Petillant Naturel after that. This was a bit richer with cranberry flavors, and I tasted a floral note of roses. The last wine was the Leon Millot 2018 “Pet Gnat” Petillant Naturel. The red grape is a French hybrid, and I picked up strawberry flavors, though as it develops, flavors could become more cherry and spice.

Rustic pet nats offer winemakers like Barry the opportunity to hone the most ancient skills using grapes and time and to give modern palates a change from the mainstream, a challenging but satisfying process.

“It was something new and fun to try,” Barry says. “I thought it would be fun to produce a history lesson in a bottle.”