Cider: Go North to the Hudson Valley in New York 



The formal production of hard cider dates back to Roman times, when Julius Caesar discovered Celts fermenting crabapples. In Europe, cider culture evolved over the ensuing centuries, and soon after landing at Plymouth, colonists began planting apple trees. Weak fermented cider became the drink of choice for most Americans (even children) because water was unsafe.



Cider eventually fell out of favor, and during Prohibition, farmers in regions like the Hudson Valley in New York (where the remaining U.S. cider production was based) yanked out their cider trees and replaced them with dessert apple trees and other crops. It wasn’t until the early 21st century that people like Susan Manning and Dough Doetsch decided to revive the traditional cider culture that helped define the region for so many centuries.



Their work was inspired by the past and the future, hoping to honor agricultural history while also contributing to the revitalization of their pocket of the Hudson Valley. Doetsch’s grandparents and great-grandparents were subsistence farmers in Callicoon who lived off the land and made cider. Now, Seminary Hill is the world’s first energy-efficient Passive House-certified cidery, with 12 acres of organic orchards, where 60 varieties of apples and pears thrive. Their ciders run the gamut from easy-drinking sweet (the Cackling Hen) to bone dry (Delaware Dry).



“When we started Seminary Hill, we were total neophytes,” Manning says. “What’s been so fun is joining other new entrepreneurs in revitalizing the Sullivan Catskills. Back in the day, this was the Borscht Belt, but that business had declined by the 1970s. Over the last 20 years, young creatives from Brooklyn have rediscovered the area, and there has been a boom in new businesses that offer an experience that’s proudly local, intensely sustainable and authentically evokes Catskills heritage.”