Apples are iconic in our culture; they have been for years. As American as apple pie. The apple of my eye. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. How ’bout them apples? Comparing apples and oranges. Colonists in the 17th and 18th centuries drank hard cider like water (literally—the water wasn’t safe to drink, so they turned to fermented fruit), and apples have since then always grown easily on the East Coast. So it was only a matter of time before the boozy beverage—which essentially vanished during the prohibition era and was the redheaded stepchild of the alcohol world with the upswing of wine and craft beer—came full circle.
“Cider really was so prolific. It was everywhere, and there was this old formula that said for every member of the household there were 11 barrels of cider,” said Tom Burford, a seventh-generation orchardist, cider-maker, and apple expert who lives in North Garden and has recently gotten national press. “Apple culture totally disappeared after the second world war, but good cider is emerging again.”
Business analysts and experts in the alcoholic beverage field began predicting several years ago that hard cider would become the fastest growing alcoholic beverage in the country, according to a report in Time magazine. Sure enough, the story reported, the category sales went up 25 percent in 2011, and it’s only been growing since then.
Burford thinks the apple culture is here to stay this time, and even the state government has taken notice and gotten on board. In the fall of 2012, Virginia became the first state to have an official Cider Week proclaimed by the governor. This year, Friday, November 14 kicks off the 11 days of festivities including pairings, tap takeovers, cider-making workshops and specialty cocktails.
The four cideries and more than a dozen orchards dappling the countrysides of Charlottesville’s surrounding counties alone are poised to be at the forefront of the rising cider tide. Could that help Virginia, the sixth largest apple-growing state in the country, become the Napa Valley of the old-timey-turned-modern drink? Can the new kid on the block compete with the more established beer and wine industries?