RIPE WITH INNOVATION AND EXPERIMENTATION Colorado is the ‘Wild West’ of cider By Kristen Richard
In a state mostly known for craft beer, Colorado’s cidermakers have created a culture built on creativity
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he year is 1860. Thousands of miners are pouring into Colorado each week, perhaps pausing on arrival after an arduous journey to look out upon the Rocky Mountains. But these miners aren’t here for the scenery. Instead, they are hoping to get lucky, find gold, and strike it rich. But whether or not they found gold doesn’t change the fact that this large influx of people forever changed Colorado’s landscape, history and industry. Especially when it came to one small thing many of them packed on their journey west: apple seeds. Carrying apple seeds would spawn an entire industry, according to “American Cider, a Modern Guide to a Historic Beverage,” by Dan Pucci and Craig Cavallo. For instance, a man named Jesse Frazier, who arrived in the late 1800s, planted 130 apple varieties. Later, in the 1880s, William Pabor (who would later found the town of Fruita) became one of the first people to plant apple trees in the Grand Junction and Grand Valley area, helping spawn the region’s agricultural industry. But with unpredictable weather, harsh terrain, pesky moths and a myriad other factors, orchard owners soon discovered farming in the Rockies was difficult at best. Apple orchards and cider somewhat fell to the wayside. However, in 1989, Brad Page, a craft beer brewer who always had an interest in cider, opened Coopersmith’s Pub & Brewing in Fort Collins, where he offered a cider on tap. “That was in the days when there really wasn’t any cider to speak
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of and the federal regulator let us serve it because it contained a percentage of malt,” he says. Later in 2011, Page and his wife, Kathe, started Colorado Cider Company in Denver. And that’s about the time, according to Brad, when Colorado cider really began to come into its own and expand. “It’s grown quite a bit and there’s a lot of cider on the market for sure. And there’s a good variety of people making cider today,” he says. Talia Haykin, owner and CEO of Haykin Family Cider in Aurora and Mountain West representative for the American Cider Association, echoes that sentiment. “Whatever you want, ciderwise, you can get here in Colorado,” she says. Here’s a look at Colorado’s cider culture today and where it’s headed.
MAKING CIDER THE FOCUS, ONE APPLE AT A TIME While cider has seen an uptick in popularity, you still don’t see very many single-varietal bottlings. But at Haykin Family Cider, you’ll find bottlings of McIntosh, Columbia Crabapple, and many more highlighting single apples. “When we first started, the general consensus in the cider world was you needed a blend of apples to get a perfect balance of tannin, acidity and fruitiness. But we didn’t have that, we had single varieties,” says Talia Haykin. But she goes on to explain that