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Virtue Sidra de Nava
When he sold Goose Island brewing to Anheuser-Busch, Greg Hall knew he'd have to stay out of beer for a while. He had a great fallback: traditional Old World ciders made with apples grown in the lush orchards of southwest Michigan.
Everything that Virtue makes is good—and available in Portland—but the company's Sidra de Nava is the one to try. Made in the style of Asturias, where most of Spain's cider comes from, this bottled offering is crisply lemony, with a refreshing bite of tartness and the clean, dry finish you'd expect from a well-made Teutonic Riesling. MARTIN CIZMAR.
Troy California Hard Cider
Stanford graduate Troy Carter tasted almost every cider on the West Coast, and most from the United States, and was not satisfied with what he discovered. So he decided to make it himself. He rode around California on his motorcycle until he found the raw materials he was looking for: heirloom apples, from trees up to 130 years old. That fruit is pressed, then wild fermented and aged for a year in pinot noir barrels, a trifecta of Old World cider technique.
The cider is dry, lightly carbonated, and semi-cloudy with a bit of sediment. The taste is extremely nuanced and complex—on certain sips it smacks tart and herbal, on others fruity and round. The world's greatest ciders, like Troy, easily rival the best in their wine counterparts, and this one finds itself equally well-suited to long, multicourse meals as it is to thoughtful sips at the end of a long day. PARKER HALL.
E.Z. Orchards 2009 Cidre
Ripe apple aroma mixed with effervescent lightness, in an Oregon-produced French-style cider. E.Z. Orchards, like many American farm producers, is relatively new to traditional cidre production, with just over 10 years' experience. But the Zielinski family knows its fruit—they have been growing apples for three generations. That, it turns out, gives them a big leg up on the competition.
Made with nine varieties of bittersweet French, English and early American apples, the Zielinskis' cidre aims for the medicinal, Champagne-glass cider enthusiast, who likes the taste of ripe fruit, terroir, and small helpings of cinnamon and nutmeg in his glass, and who pairs his cidre with fine meat and cheese. This is the New World gone old-school, and it was the best French-style cider—including the actual French ones—that we tasted this year. PARKER HALL.
WWeek 2015