Almost a decade ago, shortly after arriving in Canada, I walked into a bar and ordered a drink. At the time, cider was my beverage of choice, but the sickly sweet liquid that appeared in front of me didn’t remotely resemble the dry, funky English-style apple booze I was accustomed to back home in the U.K. Without making a conscious decision to part ways with cider, I largely moved on to wine and beer.
“Beer drinkers will open a beer and it will be bad, but it doesn’t turn them off of beer,” says Jenna Boucher, the lead cider maker at Two Blokes Cider in Seagrave. “Whereas so many people have one bad cider, and they’re like, ‘You know what? Cider is not for me.’”
Two Blokes makes Old World cider in Seagrave, Ontario
Try this: Two Blokes Cider Hex Press
Bittersweet French and heirloom Ontario apples go into this award-winning cider. $4.50, lcbo.com
Part of a growing cohort of makers, Boucher is determined to show consumers like me that cider is for everyone — including the most discerning drinkers. After working at Calgary’s Uncommon Cider for two years, she sought to learn about orcharding and other cider-making practices. “I made the move to Two Blokes Cider in Ontario because they have a six-and-a-half acre cider-fruit orchard. Here, we grow proper U.K. traditional cider fruit.”
Boucher got her start as a tour guide at a brewery, but as someone with celiac disease, she knew it didn’t make sense to keep brewing. She made the jump into cider, a safe drink for anyone with gluten sensitivities. “Cider is cool because everyone does it a bit differently; it’s like the Wild West,” says Boucher. “It can be super playful and it’s a really cool way of expressing the terroir.”
Jenna Boucher, lead cider maker at Two Blokes, was drawn to cider because she has celiac disease
One of the biggest challenges for the cider makers of Ontario and beyond is educating the masses on how varied and nuanced the drink can be. “Cider in the North American market is unfortunately misunderstood,” laments Boucher. “We grew up on Somersby and Strongbow, which just have way more of an apple-forward taste and are packed full of sugar.”
Cider might be shrouded in misunderstanding, but Ontario feels ripe for a boom. The region currently grows 15 main varieties of apples, including mcintosh, empire and northern spy, but there are likely even more lesser-known heritage styles. And, unlike wine production, which is susceptible to frost damage and Ontario’s unpredictable weather conditions, apple trees tend to be far more robust than grapevines.
Loch Mór crafts small-batch cider in Prince Edward County
Vitis vinifera, the species that includes most of the common commercial grape varieties, can only be grown in a handful of Ontario’s most southern regions, explains Sara Boyd, owner of Loch Mór Cider Co. and one of the few certified pommeliers (the cider equivalent of a sommelier) in Ontario. “Whereas you can grow apples up in the Ottawa Valley, Brockville and Georgian Bay. There are so many orchards up there and they are much more cold-hardy.”
Long before Prince Edward County became Ontario’s northernmost wine appellation, cider reigned supreme. Though the cider industry took a huge hit after Prohibition, the First World War and the Great Depression, apple orchards have been a hallmark of the area since the 19th century. “They’ve been growing apples in these areas for generations. It was such a big business and they definitely weren’t doing any fancy frost protection back then.”
While living in the U.K., Boyd met her husband, Gary, who as a Royal Marine officer spent plenty of time in Plymouth. As a result, the pair became familiar with the riches of cider country, including scrumpy, a cloudy, unfiltered cider made in the West Country. However, when they moved to South Texas, they were disappointed to find a distinct lack of cider on shelves. Necessity being the mother of invention, the pair decided it was destiny. “We thought, maybe we should try to plant a small orchard, grow the apples and make the cider we want to drink.”
Inside Loch Mór Cider Co.
As a Canadian, Boyd wanted to return home to begin the process. Looking at a map of Canada, she and her husband filtered apple-growing regions, followed by the price of land, settling eventually on P.E.C. where they planted trees in 2017. With the area’s apple-growing history and special terroir, it’s a decision they don’t regret.
“We’re on the same land type that they grow all the outstanding wines on, called the Danforth Ridge: very rocky, hilly clay loam, and you can taste the sort of shale notes to the russet apples,” she says. “They’re also a lot more intense in flavour, because it’s so hot and dry. The russets can get to nine or 10 per cent alcohol here.”
Sara and Gary Boyd own Loch Mór Cider Co.
Sara is one of the few certified pommeliers (the cider equivalent of a sommelier) in Ontario
Tariq Ahmed, owner of Revel Cider, had always been interested in food and fermentation, but after winning a grant through the University of Guelph’s incubator program, he was launched into the world of cider. “I started doing it commercially in 2014,” says Ahmed. “At that point, we were probably at the peak of the craft beer wave, and cider in Ontario was certainly riding the coattails.”
In contrast to the “alcoholic apple juice with varying levels of sweetness” that most people were used to seeing at the LCBO, Ahmed wanted to create a distinct type of cider with unique characteristics representative of Ontario. Similar to a wine made with table grapes, versus actual wine grapes, some apple varieties are better for cider and produce more exciting results post-fermentation.
Tariq Ahmed is the owner of Revel Cider
Chloë Ellingson
Revel Cider’s Waves cider
“Culinary apples, like the ones that you find in your grocery store, don’t make cider that’s incredibly inspired: It’s just acid and sugar,” says Ahmed. “There are varieties that have specific flavours, whether they’re tannic, or have a citrusy or floral component. Apples are just as distinct as wine grapes.”
While Revel Cider doesn’t have its own acreage, Ahmed has enough friends with orchards to keep him in constant supply. Plus, he often forages wild apple trees within a 10-kilometre radius of the cidery.
Try this: Revel Cider Soif
Two fermented ciders were blended to make this apple, cherry and strawberry bevvy. $16.50 for 750 ml, revelcider.ca
“We’re treating these [ciders] a lot more like a natural wine — they are all wild fermented. We are just pressing fruit, and then the yeast and bacteria and all the microflora that has been attracted or found its way to the apple skin over the years while that apple has grown, is doing the fermentation for us. So that leads to more of a complex product.”
Yet, despite all of his ingenuity and popularity among Ontario’s tastemakers and hospitality elite, Ahmed feared the worst for his then-nine-year-old business in October of last year. The owner uploaded an Instagram post, stating that “unless we do something drastic, 2023 could be the final year for Revel.” In a moving display, bars, restaurants and customers rallied together to buy cider in bulk. Still, it’s a stark reminder that cidermaking is a romantic, not lucrative, endeavour.
The Spy Cider House lineup
Over in Collingwood, when one dream ended, another began. David Butterfield, an experienced Burgundy winemaker, and Piers Roberts, a cider producer, launched Spy Cider House and Distillery in 2019, but when the pandemic put a wrench in their plans, the facility went back on the market.
Darcy Hagerman and Ian Smith, who live on 50 acres just down the road, had always harboured hopes of opening a distillery. “We looked at it and thought, ‘Cool pipe dream, not gonna happen.’” Fast-forward a year and the family was cutting a Florida vacation short and dashing home when their bid was accepted at auction.
(LEFT TO RIGHT): Martha Lowry, Spy’s head cidermaker; Heather Smith, director of marketing and sales; and owners Ian Smith and Darcy Hagerman
“It’s been an insanely steep learning curve,” says Hagerman, who owned yoga studios in Toronto before COVID annihilated most of her business. The silver lining was being given the space to dream, but her and co-owner and husband Smith — a realtor who has been sober for 25 years — knew they needed backup. As luck would have it, a family connection to one of Canada’s only female distillers helped them find their head cidermaker.
“I’ve known Ian’s family since I was born; his mom was the first person to ever babysit me,” laughs Martha Lowry, head cidermaker and distiller at Spy. “When they bought [Spy], they needed somebody to make some cider and distill, and that’s a unique set of skills that I have!”
Spy Cider House, named after the Canadian northern spy apple indigenous to the area, makes a small selection of cider, as well as apple brandy, gin and vodka. Their programming, ranging from live music to dinner series from local chef Jonathan Gushue, aims to bring in guests, but the overarching goal is for people to visit their 78-acre orchard and see cidermaking in the flesh.
“We have a full press here, which is pretty unique,” says Lowry. “Most cideries won’t press their own fruit because it’s such a big endeavour, but it means we have really good control over what we put in our blends.”
Though it’s often marketed as a beer alternative, cider has a process that is more akin to winemaking. After the apples are grown and harvested, they’re crushed and pressed before adding yeast and fermenting until it turns into alcohol. Yet despite the sophisticated process, most consumers expect to pay less for cider.
Spy Cider House and Distillery in Clarksburg, Ontario
“People expect it to be priced similar to beer, and it’s not: [Cider] is wine, and not even cheap wine,” says Lowry. “We should be selling 750 ml bottles of ciders at $20 minimum. They should be priced more like champagne, because that’s the amount of effort that goes into most.”
Given the high cost of the fruit that’s making its way into the cider, it’s impossible for makers to drop the price by much if they want to make any sort of profit. “We pay much higher taxes than wine and beer, and it’s really crippling to the industry,” says Lowry. “Running a cidery in Ontario will almost have to be a passion project, because you can’t make good money off of it.”
Inside Spy Cider House and Distillery
The future could definitely see cider talked about in the same way as wine, with appellations and Ontario-regulated distinctions marking its bottles in the LCBO, but for now it’s unregulated and, consequently, unsupported. Progress is indeed slow, but if the Ontario Craft Cider Association and Cider Canada continue to educate and increase access for producers to become pommeliers, the market could come to have a better understanding of cider.
“I think what we have to do is leverage cider as agrotourism,” says Boucher. “How do we get more people to care about it and understand it, and go from there. We are taking baby steps, but they are very important baby steps that we are taking.”
Boucher feels hopeful after an impressive showing from Canadians (including Two Blokes Cider) at The Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition (GLINTCAP), the world’s largest cider competition, which is dedicated to raising the calibre of cider and educating the industry on just how special a drink it is. For now though, cidermakers will have to pray for better legislation and continue to make great cider that tells the story of Ontario.
“If you want people to care about the ecosystems around them, one of the ways to do that is to help people fall in love with the things that are growing around them,” says Ahmed. “These flowers that you walk past every day when you go to work, I’m putting that into your glass and making you look at it.”
