Ontario cider deserve more respect

Ottawa’s champions of fine local food and drink Savvy Company, recently hosted an Ontario cider makers dinner at the Wellington Gastropub.

This event would kick off Ontario Craft Cider Week, organized by the newly formed Ontario Craft Cider Association. With more than 35 cideries operating in Ontario, the time is certainly right for a big push to promote these artisans.

Cider has a long history throughout much of Europe, but here in North America, it’s long been viewed as a distant and awkward cousin to beer. It’s long overdue for this perspective to change.

When I was at college studying winemaking in Niagara, I became very familiar with a nascent wine industry budding in Prince Edward County. The amount of physical labour (and cost) that went into a process called “hilling up” — burying up to three feet of the base of a grape stock in soil — to protect every vine from winter cold, seemed insane to me. Naturally this labour would also add to the cost of wines that I thought, at the time, were marginal at best.

My feeling was that they should concentrate on ciders and beer in the county. Now with age on the vines, new technologies and research, Prince Edward County is producing good wines and proper ciders. They can have it all.

The best news is that apples grow very well throughout Ontario and we are seeing the benefits of farming this fruit with increasingly world-class ciders.

On this evening cider representatives from Loch Mor, Farmgate, Saunders and Rice Lake were on hand pouring some of their finest ferments.

Having been a buyer for a private spirits shop in Vancouver, I long ago became tired of pumpkin-spiced products. Too much of the same and only sometimes, a good thing. As I write this however, I am enjoying a surprisingly decent (pumpkin) Pie Faced cider from local producer Saunders Farm.

Whether it’s just a matter of personal taste or if you are gluten intolerant, Ontario ciders make the case for these beverages for both fun or food pairing enjoyment.

At the Wellington Gastropub we were served a thick cut pork chop with our ciders and that made absolute sense as apples and pork are a time-honoured classic. In Normandy, France, ciders and Calvados (apple brandy) are routinely paired with their local Camembert cheese. Try that and have your mind blown.

If you can’t find these products at the LCBO, then contact the cideries directly or reach out to Debbie Trenholm and the team at Savvy Company, your one-stop shop for local goodness.