You Can’t Get There From Here

Reading Time: 8 minutes

I’ve just returned from an amazing trip to New England this past week, my first-ever trip to that part of the country. I spent four full days traveling through western Massachusetts, eastern Vermont, and the very western edge of New Hampshire, taking part in the 25th annual Franklin County Cider Days. I had been looking forward to this adventure for the better part of 2019, and it did not disappoint. This trip was a chance to catch up with cider makers and enthusiasts who I have met over the course of the year at CiderCon back in February and GLINTCAP in May, as well as meet dozens more cider industry professionals from a beautiful slice of American countryside.

The flight to Boston through Chicago was pretty uneventful. O’Hare Airport was as busy as you’d expect, but I had a layover of more than two hours, so I could grab something to eat and drink a bit of coffee before the longer flight between Chicago and Boston. The decent into Logan Airport was gorgeous, with most of the trees in the area still having some color. The inside of the airport was really well laid out, but just getting away from the airport was challenging. I vowed not to take any toll roads during my trip, and I think I was successful. Getting to Boston late in the afternoon was a mistake, because getting away from town took the better part of two hours. I didn’t arrive in Greenfield until after 7 pm, and that precluded going on to Albany. I’m hoping to get to upstate New York next year, with some additional time added to the start and end of the trip.

I was up bright and early again on Halloween for the New England Cider Tour, led by Ria Windcaller, host of the Cider Chat podcast. It rained the entire day during the tour – better than the Halloween snow we got here in Iowa – which prevented us from exploring some of the orchards at our three stops. Luckily, we had a chance to sample several different beverages at each location, inside each of the production facilities. We also got the chance to see apples being pressed for their juice at the first two locations, Farnum Hill Cidery and Fable Farm Fermentory, and had a chance to see the still up close at Silo Distillery. Silo had just started making cider in the last few months, adding to the line of spirits they already produce. At the opposite end, Farnum Hill has been producing cider for the better part of two decades.

I tried most of the line-up of ciders at Farnum Hill, and ended up bringing a bladder of their “unfiltered” cider back to Iowa. At Fable Farm, several different cider makers brought their goods to accompany our lunch: two ciders from Fable Farm, one from Flag Hill Cider, one from Eden Cider, and one from Tin Hat Cider. I bought a bottle of the single varietal Tin Hat Cider and brought that home alongside the bladder from Farnum Hill. I also purchased a small pre-made whiskey drink from Silo. All in all, it was an amazing tour. (I also found that, if I ever want to completely leave the grid, my phone doesn’t work in the middle of Vermont.)

On Friday morning, I had the chance to make the trip to New Salem Cider to visit their facility and brought back a growler of their raspberry cider, one of four they have available in their barn/tap room. I had met their cider maker, William, at CiderCon this past February, and he was part of the interesting dinner that week which involved drinking cider through a goat’s leg bone. He had convinced the folks at New Salem to turn some of their apple crop into hard cider, and had turned their old apple storage shed into an amazing cider production facility. I popped into the cider house and got a look at what he’s built out over the last couple of years, and got to sample a small taste of bone-dry cider that he hasn’t completely finished yet. After leaving New Salem, I spent the early afternoon driving around Franklin County, both to see the scenery and to figure out where the different venues for the weekend were located. Most of the towns are close together, but a couple of the venues were a big more far-flung.

Friday evening was the kickoff to Franklin County Cider Days with the apple brandy and calvados tasting, followed by the Cider Schmooze. I much preferred the French calvados to the American apple brandy – it was much smoother, and I thought the calvados tasted warmer and brighter than the apple brandies, which on their own were fantastic. During the schmooze, I had a chance to talk with a bunch of the cider makers who had made the trip in for the event, and got a lot of positive feedback on the Cider Finder concept. (One guy I was talking with, after telling him that I was developing a cider app, gave me a nearly perfect rendition of my product pitch without having heard of the idea previously!) It felt amazing receiving as much support as I did from the cider community in New England.

I called it a night a little after midnight, when I could tell I’d passed my saturation point, and made the walk back to where I was staying. Saturday morning was probably the roughest morning I’ve had in a long time after an event like the Cider Schmooze. I missed out on a couple of the educational sessions that I wanted to attend, because my body wouldn’t let me get off of the couch until nearly noon. (I think I may pass on any calvados or brandy at next year’s event, and just go for the cider-only schmooze.)

Once I could manage being upright again, I made the drive over to Millers Falls for the cider and smoked meat lunch pairing. Believe it or not, the spicy smoked chicken wings managed to calm my stomach and make my lips tingle for an hour after lunch. After lunch, I made the drive over to Turners Falls for the first session of the USACM Cider Salon at Unity Park, right on the Connecticut River. There were two sessions, and I opted for the first this year. Next year, I think I’ll do the second session, so I can get to other activities. Plus, from the social media posts I saw after the fact, it looked like the folks who attended the second session had some kind of after-party once the cider salon ended. Either way, the event was amazing, and I was able to connect with even more cider makers from all over New England, with many of the makers coming from Maine and New Hampshire – places I’ll have to make a point to visit next year.

It was a much easier morning on Sunday when I made the drive to Clarkdale Fruit Farms for some apple and pear tasting and a cooking demonstration, where they made an amazing apple, ginger, and celery root soup. Sunday morning was much cooler than the other mornings had been, and this was a great way to warm up in the chilly orchard. I was able to grab a copy of the recipe, so I can try to make the soup here at home at some point this winter. The folks who run the farm also had nearly 50 different varieties of apples and pears available to sample – some much better suited to eating, and others meant for cooking and cider making. My favorite was the Esopus Spitzenburg, which was Thomas Jefferson’s favorite variety.

After lunch, I drove over to historic Deerfield for the last two sessions of the weekend: the North vs. South Apple Smackdown and the Cider and Cheese Pairing. I signed up for the former because you can’t miss a good smackdown, and signed up for the latter because I love food and drink pairings – since CiderCon last February, I’ve tried to attend every food and cider pairing possible, and this will continue with CiderCon 2020, which I’ll discuss in a bit. The organizers offered about a dozen different apple varieties during the smackdown, including the American Golden Russet which was grown in both North Carolina and Maine (the Maine version tasted so much better than the North Carolina version, so I’m thinking it specifically grows better further north.) The three varieties I wouldn’t mind sticking in a lunchbox were the Gray Pearmain (which tasted more like a pear than an apple), the Old-Fashioned Winesap, and the Milo Gibson. Many of the others were good, but seemed more suited to cider making.

The Cider and Cheese Pairing was the best possible way to finish off Franklin County Cider Days. We had six pairings during the event. My favorite pairing of the six was Fable Farm Fermentory’s Fluxion farmhouse-style cider (which I also had during the New England Cider Tour on Halloween) and a piece of Albala Tierno, which was a “rosemary/honey-covered Manchego-style cheese,” according to the information given to us during the event. A close second went to Alpenfire Cider’s Rosy Pommeau (pommeau is a cider and apple brandy mixture) paired with Colston Basset Stilton, an incredibly powerful cheese which probably would have worked with some of the calvados I tried during the Friday evening event.

I headed back toward Boston on Monday morning, missing a good chunk of the traffic I’d encountered going the other direction several days previous. The flights going back were uneventful, and I arrived back in eastern Iowa before midnight. My cider and glassware all made it back unscathed, which was good practice to see how those things will travel the next time I travel by air to and from a cider event, which isn’t all that far away – CiderCon 2020 is the last week of January in Oakland, California! This week, I reserved my lodging, purchased my airfare, and paid the fees for the convention.

Next year’s CiderCon should be an amazing trip, especially with the extra tours and tastings I will be attending. I fly into the Bay Area on Monday, January 27, and on the 28th, I’ll be on a bus heading north into Sonoma County to visit several different cider makers: Ace Cider, Golden State Cider, Ethic Ciders, Tilted Shed Cider, and Old World Winery. I’ve also signed up for a side-by-side comparison of different beers, wines, spirits, and ciders on Thursday afternoon, and two tastings on Friday: Principles of Primary Food and Cider Taste Interactions and Pet-Nat Cider Technique and Taste. I’ll be hanging around the weekend after CiderCon, and flying back the afternoon and evening of Monday, February 3. I’m really excited about this trip, since it’s my first adventure out to California, and I’ve not had a good chance to talk with a lot of the cider makers out that way.

Even though Franklin County Cider Days was amazing, and CiderCon should be a great trip, it is nice to be back at home for a couple of months, to get some serious work done and enjoy time with the family over the holiday season. There’s a lot of year-end stuff that needs to be done, and the last few bits of Cider Finder need to be polished so the beta test can finally begin. I have a pretty major backlog of projects to attend to – videos to edit, Web sites to build and to fix, and community-building projects to move along. Other than people who have contacted me already about new projects or clients with existing relationships, I’ve begun to turn potential projects away. I think 2020 might be another year of “no,” like I had a couple of years ago when I started getting overwhelmed by new, shiny things. Perhaps I’ll talk about this more in my year-end post next month.

So, let’s see how much I can accomplish between now and the end of the year. It’s a challenge to myself to move as many things out the door as possible – many of the projects on my list have a definite end-point, and it’s nice to be able to check things off the list. I wish you all luck as well in finishing out the year. 2020 is closer than you think!