Still sick. When you are sick you can skip taking your own photo when blogging about something. I found this NY state product over at Bear World in Watertown, NY a month or so ago. There's a definite move towards plenty of hard ciders if their shelves are anything to go by. Seeing as they serve a pretty significant military base I do take the town as a pretty respectable slice of America in some ways... sorry, Craig... the USA in some ways. I only learned recently from Craig that Americans don't refer to so many American things as being from America as we Canadians do. But it's unCanadian not to say American. So there.

This cider has a lot of true cherry flavour, the sort of cherry flavour that slapped one up aside the head when one lived in Poland in 1991. We lived up in a small resort city by the Baltic in a pretty temperate farming region. At the market and in homes, cherry was one of the local flavours we were treated to from time to time. Once, a pal pulled a half litre jar out of the cupboard, a jar from his own Grannie's farm somewhere well off the path and we ate the cherries over ice cream or cake. But then he went to pour the jar of juice the fruit sat in down the sink. Much to my shock and his I hollered for him to stop for love of all that was holy. I grabbed a glass, the bottle of vodka and poured in the juice. Silence. Disgusted silence. It was like I rubbed ice cream all over a leg of lamb. Or mixed jam and mustard. Until they tried it. I could not figure out if the juice of cherry and vodka combo was considered the drink of child, a madman or a sissy but I suspect we drained both the bottle and the jar considering that point.

This cider takes me there. The colour has that edge of brown at the rim of the red that strawberry or cherry really has. In the mouth, I get that slightly barky taste of a Russet, some sour and grass of a Gravenstein as well as that Baltic farming country cherry flavour. I am not at all aware of whether those are the apples but as the maker promises that heirloom apples are what are used. It is dry in the way that Quebec's William cider is dry. I like it. Here's a Beer Advocate article about the maker.