Page 37 - Beverage Master December January 2020
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Craft Beverage
Assessing the Growth of Cider
Apples in the Pacific Northwest
By: Becky Garrison
I n 2016, the Northwest Cider Association apples will be available to cider makers. Will these
received a specialty crop grant from the
ap-ples bear fruit in the burgeoning cider market?
Oregon Department of Agriculture. This
grant enabled them to launch a signifi-cant Currently, there is no available national data on
initiative encouraging farmers to plant cider apple the breakdown of cider made with cider apples
trees in the Pacific North-west. The Northwest versus dessert apples. Michelle McGrath, Executive
Cider Association chose to focus these planting Director of the United States Association of Cider
efforts in Oregon in two areas: Willamette Valley Makers, attributes this lack of statistics to the fact
and Hood River. that the U.S. cider market consists primarily of
many very small cideries. As such, their sales are
While there has always been a small selection not reflected in any of the scan-based data found in
of heirloom cider apples available for small- trade reports.
batch releases, this initiative marks the first time
post-prohibition that a sizable number of cider Even though a majority of ciders available in gro-
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