CIDER – Summer of Rosé
By Ronald Sansone
ronald.sansone@gmail.com
Summer is in full swing, and if you are out and enjoying your summer and exploring the growing world full of delicious beer you have probably also crossed paths with an ever-growing summer drinks trend, the rosé. Rosé is a term widely used in the wine world for a type of wine that is produced by using darker grape skins to impart color on lighter colored base wines, creating a refreshing and often sparkling pink wine that goes perfect with summertime sipping. This growing rosé fondness has been crossing over into the cider world for the past few years, with many producers around the world now selling their unique versions of rosé cider, produced through innovative additions and production methods resulting in a broad spectrum of rosé ciders.
It’s Pink:
Pouring a beautiful sparkling pink cider may be enough to get some non-cider drinkers interested in drinking some alcoholic apples. But, why is it pink? There are lots of ways for a cider to get there; some rosé ciders are fermented on dark grape skins, others add juice from berries like currants, blueberries raspberries, and others take a more cider focused route with unique red fleshed apples to make their apple juice an enticing pink rosé color.
I Heart New York Rosé:
New York State cidermakers are well respected for making some of the best ciders in the world, so it makes sense that their entry into the rosé world is showing they can produce delicious pink ciders. New York City based Original Sin Cider launched their Dry Rose cider this summer. It is made with freshly-pressed New York apples and is released in cans and kegs; this rosé has a refreshing nose and is well balanced with a tart finish.
Up in Albany, Nine Pin Ciderworks, New York’s first farm cidery has their Cidre Rosé that brings together their modern New York craft cider style with old world winemaking methods to produce a full bodied rosé with complex grape aromas. Nine Pin uses a unique combination of NY State apples, co-fermented with the skins of NY-grown grape varietals including Concord, Traminette, Chancellor, and Noiret.
Long Island’s Wölffer Estate Vineyard is well known for their No. 139 Dry Rosé Cider, with a bright, shiny rosé color and fantastic floral notes highlighting the crisp aromas and flavors of the dessert fruit. The color is provided by red grape skin extract in a super convenient and portable size, this is sold as a package of four 355-ml bottles.
It’s Rosé Up North:
Well known for their sweet, high alcohol content dessert Ice Ciders, Newport, VT based cidermaker Eden Cider makes a rosé that is growing in popularity, their Imperial 11° Rosé. This cider has the body, alcohol level and juiciness of a delicious drier rosé wine and is made only from apples and red currants. Eden uses the natural Northern Vermont cold winter weather to freeze concentrate the juice before fermentation, this juice is then co-fermented with red currants. Imperial 11° Rosé is refreshingly lightly carbonated, full flavored and delicious.
Another familiar face on the cider scene, Burlington, VT-headquartered Citizen Cider produces their rosé cider with a unique name – bRosé, “made by three bros right in the great state of Vermont.” bRosé is crafted by co-fermenting 100% Vermont blueberries and sweet cider pressed at Happy Valley Orchard in Middlebury, VT. bRosé is the embodiment of cooperation: blueberry and apple, summer and fall, farmers and cidermakers.
Another familiar face on the cider scene, Burlington, VT-headquartered Citizen Cider produces their rosé cider with a unique name – bRosé, “made by three bros right in the great state of Vermont.” bRosé is crafted by co-fermenting 100% Vermont blueberries and sweet cider pressed at Happy Valley Orchard in Middlebury, VT. bRosé is the embodiment of cooperation: blueberry and apple, summer and fall, farmers and cidermakers.
Continuing further north to Quebec, Cidrerie Michel Jodoin has a lineup of many unique rosé ciders, produced witåh red-fleshed Geneva apples (the inside of the apples are red just like the outer skin!). The Cidre de Glace Rosé is their rosé ice cider, but they also produce Rosé Sparkling Cider, the crackling Coeur a tour Rosé and the Grande Tentation Rosé, the still Cidre Léger Rosé and the 12% still Rosalie.
These are just a few of the Rosé Ciders out there – if you are just getting into drinking cider, why not look for one? These refreshing pinkish-peach colored ciders offer some unique takes on how hard cider is evolving and the possibilities of elevating cider to a bright fresh summer sparkler that is equally delicious after mowing the lawn or at a beach or pool party!
