(Seattle, WA) January 18, 2012 SBS Imports and the Seattle Beer Collective are pleased to announce the expansion of their successful Cider Summit festival to Chicago, IL. The inaugural Chicago event will take place on Saturday, February 9, 2013 from 11am-7pm in the Lakeview Terrace Room at Navy Pier. The event will benefit The Great Lakes Cider & Perry Association, WBEZ Public Radio, and Heartland Alliance.

The owners and cidermakers will be on hand to inform and guide guests through the samplings which will be available in 3-ounce and 6-ounce portions. Cider Summit will feature over 60 ciders from throughout the U.S., England, Scotland, France, Spain, and even New Zealand.. The event selections are now posted at: www.cidersummit.com. The event will also feature specially selected food pairings from Fortune Gourmet.

Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 (cash only) at the door and are available online via Brown Paper tickets (www.brownpapertickets.com/event/292749) and at the Hotel Palomar concierge desk. Admission includes a tasting glass and 10 drink tickets. Additional drink tickets will be available for sale onsite at $2 per ticket. The event is 21 and over only.

SBS & Seattle Beer Collective have previously produced five Cider Summits in Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. “We believe we’ve created a unique event concept and are excited to bring this to Chicago,” noted event co-founder Alan Shapiro of SBS Imports. “We have assembled a terrific range of ciders and this will be a great sampling opportunity for both cider lovers and the cider curious.”

For those seeking to utilize public transportation, Chicago Brew Bus will provide shuttle service starting at 10:30am between the Blue Line Grand stop, Red Line Grand-State stop, and Navy Pier throughout the day. CTA buses also run directly to Navy Pier. Onsite parking is available in the Navy Pier garages.

Cider Summit sponsors include Binny’s Beverage Depot, Hotel Palomar, Chicago Brew Bus, and River North Sales & Service. Media support is provided by Chicago Reader and WBEZ Public Radio.

The growing U.S. appetite for regional craft beers is having a positive, knock-on effect for the makers of local cider, sparkling and still wine.  According to the Brewers Association, the craft beer industry grew by more than ten percent last year, continuing nearly a decade of strong expansion.  U.S. cider sales are also up, increasing  23% from 2010, the fourth straight year of double-digit growth, according to Euromonitor International.Today’s Midwest beverage scene, teeming with local libations, is seeing its ranks grow as consumers, awakened to new possibilities by craft beers and the local food movement, fuel growth in other beverage segments,  like regional wines.

Bill Oliver,  owner of Oliver Winery in Bloomington, Indiana puts it this way: “We’re selling 350,000 cases of wine a year, so I guess we’ve changed somebody’s mind.”  Oliver also makes Beanblossom Hard Cider, which it relaunched last year.  “I think people are just looking for something new and different and it was cider’s time,” says Oliver.  ”I’d like to describe it as some sort of moment of truth, but I think as people’s palates evolve they want something more interesting, something different. They’re tired of beer or whatever they’ve been drinking.”

Hard Cider: The Evolving Palate

Cider has seen astronomical growth in recent years.  For example, the presence of cider in restaurants has increased by nearly 90% in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the first six months of 2011, says Technomic’s MenuMonitor.   Helping the sales of hard cider is its popularity among women who consume an equal of amount as cider as males, according to the Wall Street Journal.

According to industry analysts, one reason for increased cider consumption is the growth of craft beer.  Bruce Wright, a partner at J.K.’s Scrumpy in Flushing, Michigan,  is quick to acknowledge the role craft beer has played in cider’s new, unbridled momentum. “It’s those kind of guys [craft brewers] who have…been the pioneers for beer to change and they’ve defined what consumers want,” says Wright. “We’re trying to do the same thing with our cider. I mean, we don’t fit into a category….we wanted to make something that was ours and so that’s what we did.”

Wright believes that cider is filling a gap in the market. “Hard cider fits in that middle ground for the person that doesn’t want to drink beer or have a glass of pinot,” he says.

Erich Bertsche of the Chicago based Prima Cider says people who used to be only beer drinkers are not only open to trying new brews but actively searching for them.  Bertsche says this change in consumer preferences will prompt local cider makers to go to greater lengths to source their apples locally. “Now you will start to see a bunch of local cideries sourcing local apples to serve the market,” he said.

See related story:  Prima Cider Rides the Hard Cider Wave

The new competition in the local cider industry is not a concern for J.K Scrumpy’s who’ve been making cider for more than a century.  Rather, Wright sees this recent growth as a very positive development that is helping to preserve Michigan’s remaining cider apple orchards. “In 1970, in the area of Flushing, Michigan, a suburb of Flint, there were thirty-seven orchards, and now there are two,” he said.  “So we want to preserve the orchards and we think we’re doing the right thing making a local cider.”

Sparkling Wine: Locavore Galore

There are also indications that the craft beer industry, together with the local food movement, is having a domino effect on sparkling wine consumption in the Midwest where some sparkling winemakers are experiencing strong growth.  In the U.S., the consumption of sparkling wines has increased in recent years as growing numbers of wine drinkers see it as an acceptable and cheaper alternative to champagne.

Jill Joyce, Director of Brand & Product Development at Illinois Sparkling Company says people’s attitudes towards regional sparkling wine have changed considerably over the last four years.  Joyce says proof of this change was apparent when they launched  Illinois Sparkling Company during 2011.  Illinois Sparking is made in Peru, Illinois using 100% Illinois grapes.

“Right now we’re struggling to keep up with demand. Whether it’s restaurants or retail, or just the general consumer, they’ve been really excited to try something different and new,” Joyce says.

Joyce says another factor in sparkling wine’s favor is that while makers of still wine in the Midwest have struggled against negative stereotypes, local sparkling winemakers have been relatively immune to these prejudices. “Domestically there are some really great sparkling wine producers here in the Midwest, especially in Michigan.  Nobody associates that all good sparkling wines must come from a certain place,” says Joyce.

The makers of still wine in the Midwest do often suffer from consumer prejudice, but for Oliver the success of the craft beer industry is also helping wineries and wine organizations across the region change these negative attitudes.  “I think we all kind of live under that stigma of, if it’s not from California, New Zealand, or from France, then it’s not good wine,” he says. “We have patiently worked to change people’s minds.” 

For Oliver, changing consumer attitudes comes down to one on one interactions, changing minds one person at a time. “I go out and spread the story of Oliver wine. I also take people out to the vineyard to do vineyard tours, to do wine tastings at the vineyard, to do cellar tours, to go in-depth. It’s really that intimate; high impact human contact where people walk away going, ‘wow they really know what they’re doing, and the wines are really, really good.’  It’s something that we all have to do.”

Prima Cider Rides the Hard Cider Wave

Imagine a fermented beverage that was once popular and jovial, then ravaged by prohibition, finally driven to the brink of extinction, only to be kept alive by farmers and locavores for decades.  Years later, the same drink slowly experiences a renaissance. Recognized for its unique and varied taste profile, the beverage makes its way from craft brewers to the mainstream. This is the story of fermented cider; a left-for-dead libation that is now undergoing a renaissance in the restaurant and bar scene of the Midwest.

For the Bertsche family of Long Grove, Illinois, cider is a tradition that began three generations ago in Germany with a Grandfather who enjoyed making his own farmhouse style ciders. Lately, cider has become more than a family tradition enjoyed with meals— Patriarch, Richard Bertsche; and his three sons: Erich, Tristan, and Martin; along with nephew, Carl Maier, are now making noteworthy ciders themselves. Joining the growing ranks of ambrosial Midwest ciders is the Bertsche’s Prima Cider.

Prima Cider currently offers two styles of cider: Most, a simpler, farmhouse-style cold cider; and Brut, which is the Champagne-style sparkling cider, perhaps more common to the American palate. Prima Brut has done well in restaurants seeking a higher end cider that can be paired with foods, according to Richard Bertsche.

“We’re just making cider the way we know it to be — a dry, fully fermented cider — the way we always had it in Southern Germany,” says Erich Bertsche.

At Prima Cider, the process starts with the right combination of local heirloom, antique, and cider apples to achieve a full, balanced flavor. As Richard Bertsche puts it, “Cider is governed more by the quality of ingredients than by technology and chemistry.”

Cider apples can be broken down into four main classifications: Sweet, Bittersweet, Sharp, and Bittersharp (see sidebar for more details). Each style of apple contributes its own character and flavor profiles to the cider. While leveraging a variety of apples may seem straightforward, it’s actually remarkable, given that many of the hard cider-making varietal apples were nearly wiped out during prohibition. Prima sources its apples from Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois.

Erich Bertsche elaborated on the family’s Prima Cider blend, “We place a priority on Old-English and American varieties. We also use crab varieties in our mix because they’re the only true American variety with high tannins.“ Tannins are important to cider, providing astringency just as they do in wines.

After the desired apple blend is selected, the process of fermentation begins. The Most cider goes through one fermentation and the Brut goes through two. After the apples are pressed, the fresh juice is inoculated with select yeast strains. The fermentation process for both ciders lasts for one to two weeks in stainless tanks. Next, both ciders are transferred to the final slow fermentation vessel and kept at a low temperature in an underground cellar.

The cider stays here for up to 16 weeks. During this period, it is racked multiple times which naturally clears away much of the sediment.

Once the cider is fully fermented, it’s blended again with different mixtures of cider from other tanks to perfect the flavors.  The Bertsches create their blends by keeping multiple tanks; each with a different mixture of cider apples and yeasts. Once they’ve created the desired taste, the cider is either cask or bottle conditioned. Typically four weeks later the Most (still) cider is ready for consumption. For microbial stability, the Bertches said they use a combination of sulfides, filtration and UV pasteurization.

The fermentation process continues in the bottle for the Brut or Method Champenoise cider which retails for around $23 a bottle in Chicago. The Brut bottles are cellared anywhere from 12-18 months with additional fermentation taking place on the lees. The finished Most Cider has about between one and two atmospheres of pressure and the Brut has five atmospheres of pressure (or 73.5 psi) which requires Champagne style bottles. After about 12 months, bottles are riddled and degorged by hand.

These rigorous standards are paying off in spades for the Bertches whose cider is now in 14 restaurants and bars in the Chicagoland area. Despite this growing popularity, craft ciders are still somewhat unknown to the larger public.  Today’s ciders, such as Prima Cider, could be among those that shape consumer preferences.  According to Eric Bertsche, it’s an opportune moment to be in the premium cider business. “Many of the restaurants or bars will taste our cider and be completely blown away because they’ve never had anything like it,” says Eric.

Joe Darling, beverage director at the recently opened Au Cheval diner, which carries Prima Cider says, “We took great pains to compose a selection that represented all styles of beer and we wanted a cider because it’s a subsector of craft brewing.  Prima is everything you’d hope for in a cider. It’s a great traditional cider made locally. It’s not overly sweet; it’s complex, and perfect to round out our selection here.”

When speaking of Prima Cider, Eric Bertsche says, “Our biggest attributes are that we make a dry, full-bodied cider. We believe that our unique taste comes from our cold cellaring process; the apples we use, and the fact that we give it time to develop into a more complex drink. We strive to create a cider we like to drink.”

Source:  Midwest Wine Press

Richard Bertsche of Prima Cider

The hard-cider sell

Written by Tess Jewell-Larsen and published in Hard Cider International on 01/20/2012
Photographs provided by Prima Cider

Just north of Chicago in Long Grove, Illinois, four men of the Bertsche family—Richard, Erich, Tristan and Martin—are continuing a German family tradition of making farmhouse cider. Prima Cider is cleverly positioned in the “part city, part country” semi-rural area of Long Grove. The cider is made in the Bertsche family home and an adjacent building to the house, with an underground cellar that is used as a fermentation and cellar area. A small orchard adorns the property, filled with selected apple varieties for future cider and blending experimentation. Prima Cider started commercial production last year and have plans of expansion once cider awareness increases in their Illinois local.

Always a fan of the family, start-up ciderhouses—well just learning about new ciderhouses in general really—I was excited to talk to the Richard and Erich Bertsche about their German cider history and why they started the ciderhouse.

Why the name Prima Cider?
Prima Most and Prima Brut cider bottles

Prima Most and Prima Brut cider bottles

Rich Bertsche: Prima in German means excellent as in “schmeckt Prima,” tastes great and in Italian it means first. At first we thought Prima Cidre and in the end we thought we are American and want to produce great American ciders with if you will German underpinnings. The words Prima Cider just seemed to go together.

Erich Bertsche: We felt that we wanted a name which stood for a premium product as well as reflect the fact that we were one of the first on the scene in Illinois. When we started the company early last year we were the only local producer of craft cider in Illinois.

Why cider? From your website there seems to be an interesting history behind your cider, can you describe it to us?

RB: In our family cider was always part of our culinary traditions. Most people think of England or Normandy for cider and sometimes Spain but Germany also has a cider tradition. My grandfather in Southern Germany, had presses and milled and pressed the cider for the local farmers. They brought their apples; he pressed the juice that the farmers then took home to ferment.

It was the everyday drink that every farmer had year round. I think this was not unlike the farm experience in the early 1900’s in the U.S. As a child our family lived for a year with my grandparents in Germany and I had (hard) cider everyday with my grandfather for lunch and evening dinner; this as a fourth grader. You could say I got hooked at a young age. Today it still is common to get a good cider (known as Most to use) in certain areas of Germany.

I started making cider in 1980 when I had my first home together with my father. I had a small cellar area as did he. That allowed us to cold cellar cider. My three boys grew up with cider at home. For dinner they would go down to the cellar with a jug that was filled and consumed for dinner by all. When friends and family came over for dinner the evening always started with cider. It was the unfamiliar drink everyone enjoyed. Over the years, many acquired a taste for the dry natural cider we made and ultimately their encouragement resulted in our decision to commercially produce cider.

EB: We grew up drinking cider and absolutely loved it. In recent years any time our family got together and one of our ciders was placed on the table that was all we could talk about. We started to play with labels on our bottles and a lot of our friends started to get into it as well. In 2009 I was in Italy touring a small winery, which was run by two friends of mine. I was inspired by the hard work and passion they put into their wines. I thought to myself, we have to create that same type of energy with our cider and that was it. We decided to start the business shortly after.

Who does what in the ciderhouse?
Long Grove IL Apple Orchard

Orchard in Long Grove, IL where Prima Cider has selected specific apple varieties of interest that they plan to use to experiment and to blend.

RB: It’s a shared responsibility and when we are racking, bottling and similarly it becomes a family weekend event. It’s very much a family affair.

Over the years I have scouted and located many of the orchards in Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois that have the apple varieties we are looking for. Over the years we’ve also experimented with different apple varieties because the apples available in the U.S. are not those available in Europe and also the climate is different in the US. Often the same apple varieties taste different here. Erich, Tristan and Martin have taken on a passionate interest in cider and has become something we can do together which make it fun.

Erich handles marketing, Tristan and Martin help in the production and we all are active tasters.

EB: Richard is the cider master from choosing the right mix of apple varieties, yeasts, and determining the right blend for each of our products. I have concentrated on the marketing aspect. But at the end of the day we all to pitch-in and wear many hats, especially since we began offering our ciders commercially last year.

What types of cider do you make? Do you try to focus your cider on a specific origin of ciders or is it a mixture? If so, what?

RB: We make a cider, Prima most which is a very much a farmhouse still cider and we also make it with a small amount of natural carbonation. We have a Sparkling Cider, Prima brut that we make method traditional (champenoise).

Controlling the type of apples used unfortunately is subject to availability from local orchards and so the cider can vary considerably. We only use late fall (early November) harvested apples that are fresh pressed. We make our cider virtually sulfide free and use no other supplement other than cider yeasts. Our ciders are fermented in stainless steel tanks so as not in any to tamper with the flavors imparted by the cider alone. Fermentation is always complete; the cider is dry the way we think cider should taste. Our personal favorite is a cider with no carbonation, served from a barrel, poured into a glass at a distance from the spigot allowing the cider to aerate and create its own effervescence.
Picture of Prima Most and Prima Brut 2

Prima Cider dedicates itself to its Prima Most and Prima Brut ciders, both with a German background.

What apples varieties do you use and why did you choose them?

RB: Apples varieties of choice are Golden Russets and Russets in general, Winesaps (old varieties), Arkansas Black, Nothern Spy and when available Bramley’s Seedling, Ashmed Kernals, Calville Blanc D’Hiver.

We use quite a mix, subject to availability. There are noticeable variances in the taste of cider even when you use the same variety. Our cider year to year can be quite different in taste based on the availability of apple that year and on the seasonal variations in climate and weather. We contract our apples and have developed a relationship with various growers so that we can better guarantee availability.

In the U.S. there is a growing interest on the part of growers to plant other apple varieties (non-dessert apples) for use in cider, which has been a good thing for us.

How do you feel your product is different from those already on the market?

RB: We feel our product is different, governed by the quality of apple varieties we use, the way we make it, the non-sweet character of the cider we strive for and the way it is served. It is an education process. Unfortunately most people think of cider as a sweet product and as a close friend of mine stated observed “Every cider I’ve purchased has reminded me of 7-up and apple juice.” In our own way we are trying to change that perception.

EB: Most people that taste our ciders have trouble placing the country of origin, which we think is a good thing because we are trying to pursue a different direction.

Prima Cider began making craft cider first for our own pleasure and tastes and then for friends and family. Over thirty years we have refined the process, found out which American apples work best for craft cider and which ones don’t. It does make a difference! We’ve seen over the years an increasing appreciation and growing demand for specialty hard to find ciders, dry in taste with noticeable acidity, ciders that have no resemblance to the candy sweet soda pop variety ciders commonly found and still dominant in today’s market.

Prima Cider is made from finest, hard to find, heirloom apple varieties. Using apples varieties such as Golden Russets, Ashmead’s Kernal, Brambley’s Seedling, Calville Blanc D’Hiver, Arkansas Black and Winesap that have the tannins, acidity and aromatic flavors which is essential to making a high quality cider. Prima Most is cold cellar aged, best served straight from the barrel, or tap but also in bottles. Our Champagne cider, Prima Brut is twice fermented using the champagne method, bottle fermented and cold cellar aged 12 months or more. Over time it develops complex flavors, wonderfully small bubbles that linger for hours after opening. It is best consumed at special occasions or with fine food. Prima Cider believes these products demonstrate that fine cider making is possible in America and trust you will think likewise.