Come and discover what a great hard cider tastes like!
Our History
We had our first cider come out in 2015, our Original. The next year we added Raspberry and Blueberry. After almost selling out of product, in 2017 we added a few more ciders and a dessert wine. I left my job that Spring and built our small “cider shack” tasting room to focus on cider making and marketing full time. We quickly outgrew that tasting room and started to plan to build a bigger tasting and production room. In the late Fall of 2019, we finished our new tasting room and opened it up. 2020... well we all know what happened then.
What is hard cider?
Hard cider is a beverage made by fermenting fresh-pressed, unfiltered apple cider with yeast to produce an alcoholic beverage. The word “hard” denotes the presence of alcohol (as opposed to non-alcoholic “soft” drinks). The alcohol content of hard cider varies fairly widely anywhere from 4.5% up to 12% or higher.
Types of Hard Cider
The way hard cider is produced, packaged, and sold varies widely. Many hard ciders made with a lower alcohol content, packaged in 12 oz bottles or cans, and carbonated. This makes them somewhat similar to a beer or malt beverage in the way that they are served and consumed. Wine-style hard cider can be still or contain natural or artificial carbonation, tends to have a higher alcohol content, is packaged in wine bottles, and served in a wine glass.
Whether produced in a beer- or wine-style, like wine, hard cider can be classed according to their level of sweetness. The least sugar is found is “dry” ciders with steadily increasing amounts of residual sugar in off-dry, semi-dry, semi-sweet, and sweet varieties.
How to Serve Hard Cider
Most varieties of Deep Roots Hard Cider are best served chilled. Our barrel aged ciders benefit from being served at room temperature to get the most of the flavors imparted by the barrel. Alternatively, our ciders are also excellent served hot on a cold day, particularly the Apple Crisp which has a mulled-cider profile with no additional mulling spices required.
While a hot cup of Apple Crisp can be enjoyed in a mug, chilled cider should be served in a wine glass. With a wide variety of ciders to choose from Deep Roots has something to pair with any meal, but obvious choices for our purely apple varieties are pork, poultry, and seafood.
Our drier varieties also substitute well in any recipe calling for a dry white wine.