Celebrating summer with locally made craft cider
NOTHING SCREAMS SUMMER like sitting down on a patio with a cold glass of something refreshing.
Picture it — putting your feet up after a long day and unwinding with a drink you enjoy.
After you read this month’s Hamilton Business cover story, you may feel inspired to choose hard cider as that ice-cold beverage in your hand.
Right now, there’s a small crop of craft cideries in the area producing unique, creative blends along with traditional flavours. Everything from classic apple to an award-winning wild blueberry aged in a tequila barrel.
While cider seems to be all the rage lately — much like the craft beer trend of recent years — there are some redtape hills to climb, according to local producers.
Some say the markup structure at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario is making it too expensive to get their product into stores. Others cite regulations requiring them to have two hectares of land before they can set up retail outlets on their properties, and licensing that has them over a barrel: regulated by wine standards despite being consumed and sold like beer.
Despite this, they don’t qualify for the VQA tax benefits that help Ontario’s wine producers because their products are not made with grapes.
Hurdles aside, the industry is growing. Over the past three years, Ontario cider sales have more than quadrupled, totalling $17.6 million in 2015-16, says the LCBO. And this represents only a portion of the cider consumed in the province because some producers opt not to sell in LCBO stores due to the hefty markups.
As you leaf through this month’s issue, you’ll find profiles on four local producers as well as a look at the province’s cider industry as a whole.
If you feel tempted, after you’ve finished reading, to head out to try a local blend or two, we won’t be surprised.
Summertime is here and the cider is there for the sampling.