Emily Ritchie Northwest Cider Association Executive Director Chats Washington State Ciders

On today’s episode we are chatting with Emily Ritchie from Northwest Cider Association. Emily is the Executive Director and champion of cider and cider makers in the Pacific Northwest.

Emily was a good sport as we kept her focused on Washington State cider and cider makers. The association is a non-profit that has the goals of increasing the quality of cider produced in the region, increase sales of NW cider and cultivate the community of cider enthusiasts. Throughout the Pacific Northwest the NWCA is supporting over 100 cidermakers and orchardists who are growing and making some of the best ciders in North America and the world.

We talk about a wide range of topics about cider and cider making. Did you know there is a Lost Apple Project? How do you feel about hops in cider? Yes, hopped cider is thing. You will learn a ton about cider in this episode.

NWCA has a Cidery Map. You can plot your next cider road trip by using the map to find cideries throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia. You will find out a bit about each location and what they specialize in. Truly an amazing resource to help you in your journey to Explore Washington State (and other states too…….) =)

We also chat about the Northwest Cider Club. The club is a quarterly celebration of cider that is curated and delivered straight to your door. No longer do you have to drink boring cider that you find in your local supermarket. 

The next box is the Apple Varietals Box join by August 18th 2021 to receive this limited release of ciders showcasing the heart and core of cider Apples! 

If you’re into cider and want to hear more about some of the cidermakers who are doing amazing things in Washington State check out our episodes featuring

•  Peter Ringsrud of Snowdrift Cider
•  Andrew Handley of Union Hill Cider
• Locust Cider & Brewing Founder Jason Spears
• PNW Cider Girl Ava Davis

Emily Ritchie Northwest Cider Association Episode Transcript

Scott Cowan [00:00:00]:

In one word as it relates to cider. I want you to describe each of those, those like how would you describe Washington in one word as it relates to cider. Welcome to the Exploring Washington State podcast. Here’s your host, Scott Cowan. All right. My guest today is Emily Ritchie. Emily, you are known as the executive director for the Northwest Cider Association. Thank you for being here and welcome.

Emily Ritchie [00:00:41]:

Hello. Thanks for having me.

Scott Cowan [00:00:44]:

So, as before, we hit record and I was joking with you about Oregon and that, but for the sake of this episode, I think it’s really important that you tell us about the Northwest Cider Association, even if it means we have to talk about Oregon and Idaho and British Columbia.

Emily Ritchie [00:00:59]:

Yeah, really briefly, we’ll just like dip our toes in, travel around and then back to Washington.

Scott Cowan [00:01:05]:

I love it.

Emily Ritchie [00:01:06]:

So Northwest Cider Association. We are a nonprofit. We’re a trade association set up to support cider makers here in the Pacific Northwest. And we were founded in 2010, so really not that long ago. But if you can think way back to 2010, there were only seven cideries in the whole Pacific Northwest at that point, which blows my mind because today we’re, what? Twelve years into it or so, there are close to 200. So it’s been an enormous growth.

But back in the day, because there are only seven cideries, we decided to work together across state borders as well as country borders. So not only are we talking Oregon here, but Washington, Idaho, Montana, and we include British Columbia. So we’ve got friends making cider in the Okanagan Valley, we’ve got folks in the Applegate Valley, we’ve got the Bitter Root Valley. So it’s really fun to talk apple varieties, growing styles, terroir, the actual drinkers. We have so much similarity in this whole region that we’re like, well, if we’re founding this group, let’s work together, let’s work across these borders.

And the idea is we want to make sure a quality of cider is really high, right? We want to make sure all the cider that’s hitting the shelf is the best we can make because everyone seeing one cider from Oregon is going to sort of equate that with all ciders in Oregon or all in the Northwest. So we’re all in this together. We want to make sure there’s a lot of education around cider. It’s so new. Like I said, we exploded out of the gate. We want to make sure people really know what apple varieties are or growing regions are, or the history of apples. And the other thing is, my goal is to make sure there’s good community around cider makers. We’re not competing against each other in this tiny, tiny little bathtub that is our market. But we want to make sure that we’re all working together to talk cider and grow this market together.

Scott Cowan [00:03:14]:

That’s very cool. First off, let me ask you, I’m going to warn you I’m throwing you under the bus with the second question. The first one, I think, is kind of easy, though. I thought I read somewhere that there’s projected growth that cider is going to be like 10% of the alcohol market in a few years. So it’s not just a little slice of the overall market anymore, is it? It’s growing quite rapidly.

Emily Ritchie [00:03:37]:

It is growing rapidly, but it depends on what market you’re talking about. Like, globally, right? US. Is drinking quite a lot of cider compared to certain other countries, though England dominates by far. They drink like a third of the world cider or something. But then if you think nationally, cider is generally 1% to 3% of the overall beer market, and we’re talking all brands beer, but here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re doing better than that, where we’re more like six to 8%. Okay, so we’re very proud of that. But that’s still a very small single digit number, and if it gets to 10%, we’re talking of the overall beer market, not the alcohol market.

Scott Cowan [00:04:26]:

Okay. All right, so here’s the bus. I’m going to ask you to describe each of the okay, so you said Washington, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia, in Montana. Okay. In one word as it relates to cider, I want you to describe each of those. How would you describe Washington in one word as it relates to cider?

Emily Ritchie [00:04:47]:

Gosh, no one’s ever asked me that before. That’s an interesting way of thinking about it. I always think about it really regionally.

Scott Cowan [00:04:54]:

Okay, we can go. I’ll let you go regional.

Emily Ritchie [00:04:56]:

The Northwest, I would say so. Globally, there’s a lot of rules around cider, right? Like, very similar to wine. If you go to France, like, cider is this one thing, there are rules you have to follow. But when you think of the Northwest, we are not about rules at all. That’s really what got me into this. But we’re very innovative. There’s a lot of passion. A majority of the cideries that are sort of under my wings started after 2014, so they’re really quite new. And many of these people, it’s their second career because they chose a lifestyle path. They really wanted to get into cider because they love it. Many people want to live on a farm and grow their own apples. And so because of that, you find these ciders that are really playing with a lot of different nuances, different styles. You might find really traditional ciders made with apples that were bred for making cider, like these bittersweet French varieties and such. You also might find habanero and pineapple ending up in your cider. So there’s a lot of crossover with the beer market, right? Like, the brewers are playing with that. There’s a lot of fun there. Cider is super fun here because you can get every style under the sun. We’re making up our own styles of cider, right? I’m like such a two year old in my inner self. I hate. If someone’s like, that’s a rule. I’m like, watch me break it. So I feel like I really fit in with cider in that way. We’re like, don’t give me a rule. So I would say innovative, creative, playful. And I could give you that one word for each of these regions. But really what I love, because it’s my job, is the people in the industry. I’ve got really good friends and buddies in this industry now. Over 4 July weekend, I was just staying at a cider maker’s house over the weekend in Port Townsend area. It’s so fun to meet the people, and then you see where their passion came from and how they ended up in this industry.

Scott Cowan [00:07:03]:

All right, we’ll let you slide with that because I knew that that was almost going to be impossible to answer. I mentioned in a good natured way, not in a bad way. I just thought it’d be kind of funny. All right, so we’re going to talk about Washington state. And you referenced earlier that in 2010 when this started, there was seven cidermakers in the area. How many of those were Washington State based?

Emily Ritchie [00:07:29]:

Three or four.

Scott Cowan [00:07:31]:

So a good chunk of it was Washington State. Okay. And approximately now how many are in Washington?

Emily Ritchie [00:07:36]:

I would guess 70 to 80 now in the state.

Scott Cowan [00:07:40]:

That’s a massive jump. Huge jump.

Emily Ritchie [00:07:45]:

And a huge part of that is Washington grows more apples than anywhere else in the country, right? Like, 60% of the nation’s apples are grown in Washington state. And so many of those are right.

Scott Cowan [00:07:58]:

Where you are, but the ones are grown right where I am, for the most part are dessert apples. They’re planting acres of cider, but they’re still growing the Red Delicious and the Cosmic Crisp, and those apples that don’t lend themselves to cider quite as well.

Emily Ritchie [00:08:17]:

When you’re thinking of being really creative on making cider, you got to start with the raw ingredient. And there is nothing wrong with making cider from a dessert apple. You can play around with acidity levels. So three things in cider you need, right, are acid, some kind of sweetness, because you got to ferment into alcohol, and then you need tannins. So, like a lot of wine, the tannin will be like if you bite into a green apple. And that astringency level can change depending on the type of apple. When you’re starting with the dessert apple, that’s the sweetness that you need. The Fuji or Red Delicious, that’s the sweetness you need for the yeast to eat the sugar and turn that into alcohol. So you need some sugar somewhere. But then there’s plenty of quote unquote dessert apples that can also give you acid. Like you think of the Granny Smith, right? It’s great for making pies or applesauce. It’s also great for making cider. And folks can take that and make an awesome cider as is, and they can play with things like yeast strains to make different flavor profiles. But then they could also take that cider and barrel age it. They could take it and add something else that has tannins. It’s not an apple like the red currant. Some of my favorite ciders have red currant in them, and there’s a lot of tannin to that and acid. And you throw that into some cider, and you’ve got this nice balance and mix of a flavor. So I wouldn’t start from the premise of saying the apples grown in Winachi don’t make good cider. But I also think there’s tons to learn and it’s really fun to think about cider apple varieties that for centuries now, farmers have been breeding them to make the tannin level they want or the acid level they want.

Scott Cowan [00:10:07]:

Are you familiar with the I think it’s called the Lost Apple Project.

Emily Ritchie [00:10:11]:

Yeah. I love reading those Associated Press articles or wherever they show up. I’m like, oh, what have they found now?

Scott Cowan [00:10:18]:

Yeah, like a month ago, one hit my wall on Facebook and I was like, I didn’t know anything about them until somehow it came to my awareness on Facebook and I was like, there’s still lost apples out there. That’s kind of amazing to me because I think so many people think of apples and they think of, like, Granny Smith or Red Delicious, something you see at Safeway. You might see a Fuji. But really, there’s literally hundreds of apple varieties from thousands okay, the variables for this for huge, you got thousands of apple varieties to play around with, in theory, to create a cider. So amazing.

Emily Ritchie [00:11:04]:

It’s amazing. And the apple actually comes from the Kazakhstan region. And one day I really want to bring cider makers out there to go taste apples from the wild forests in Kazakhstan.

Scott Cowan [00:11:16]:

Wow. Not Washington state related. So I want to ask a question because you mentioned the British consume a lot of cider. I don’t know if we were recording at that time or not, so I apologize, folks, if you’re like. Where did that come from? Why do you think cider is so big in Britain, in the UK.

Emily Ritchie [00:11:38]:

I think it’s a history thing, really. They have been consuming cider for a long, long time. And so they have the infrastructure. If you go to so you land in London, right? You fly over from Seattle, you land in London, you got to head west to the west country, which is like Gloucester, Somerset, Hereford, even down into Cornwall, that whole area. And you’ll find ciders popping up elsewhere. But there’s millions of trees there, and they’ve got them set up kind of like in Winachi, where it’s this production heavy space. But for them, they’re not growing the Fuji, the Galas, the Granny Smith. They are growing what’s called bittersweet or bitter sharp apples, which I’ll step back and give you kind of four categories of cider fruit. So you’ve got the sweets, which are dessert apples that we’ve been talking about, they just have the sugar in them, the sweetness, and they end up on our table, and we eat them. You’ve got the sharps that have a lot of acid in them. So almost a Granny Smith would fit into that, where there’s a lot of acid when you bite in. And that is really helpful for cider. But then you’ve got bittersweet and bittersharp. And the bitter part is the tannin I was talking about, like when you bite into a green banana, you’ve got that astringency there’s a lot of apples that have a lot of tannins. And in fact, a lot of folks I know surprisingly have bit into crab apples. And so you have that sense. You’re like, oh, yeah, that is a bitter apple. So crab apples are often bitter. They’re also usually really high in acid. And so either people tell me they made for great play as a kid, where you just picked them off and threw them at friends, or he’s raising his hand, one of those, or grandma made pies with them or something like that. But there’s a million varieties, like we were saying, there’s thousands of varieties in England that over many generations, they grew them for those bitters sharp, the high acid and high tannin or bittersweet varieties, the high tannin and sugar levels, to then make cider. So they’ve got these hedgerows and they’ve got tools, like they’ve got machinery to harvest. That way they actually shake the trees and the apples fall off and then they gather them. Kind of like if we’ve got any tennis players on here. Like, you pick up all the balls. You’ve got this machine that rolls around, picks them up, and then you’ve got them in your basket. Because if you’re making cider with apples that are grown for cider, it doesn’t matter if they’re bruised litter, you’re just going to bruise them more when you smash them up and turn them into juice. So what I’m getting at is in England, and this happens in France and Spain as well, they have, I don’t know, centuries of growing very specifically for producing and for making cider. And so it’s sort of an art and a science there. And they also have that time where the general consumer, the drinker is like, oh, cider is a thing they used to pay workers in cider back in the day because it was safer than drinking water is my understanding. And then now it’s something you pay for. But in England, you find cider at any pub you go to. It’s just one of the things. But if you go to the west country, that’s really where they’re drinking cider. My relatives live in the north of England and in London, and they’re not really cider drinkers. It’s a very regional thing.

Scott Cowan [00:15:22]:

Okay, so kind of like here then. I mean, the west country is drinking more cider per capita, if you will, and the Northwest is drinking more cider per capita 100%, but using the UK or whatever you want to call it. England, British, the ciders that are being made there currently, you’re kind of familiar with those, I’m going to guess, to some degree. Okay, how do those ciders compare and contrast to the stuff that’s being made in the Northwest?

Emily Ritchie [00:15:53]:

There’s a huge variety. Similarly to the US. There’s certain big brands that really dominate the market in England, and they make sweeter ciders often from concentrates, and they’re fizzy and sweeter, and the English love to poopoo on it. And I think my dad even got drunk on that growing up. My dad’s British, so he has this had hopefully I’m fixing this for him, but had this idea that cider was this, like, sweet alcohol thing that he got drunk on as a teenager, and he didn’t want to go back to it. They have that, but then they have these really beautiful orchard based ciders. And Perries, which is so cider is fermented apple juice. Perry is fermented pear juice. Perry is really from Hereford. There’s a very specific region that it comes from. And some of my favorite producers besides Pacific Northwest are in England. They are making these beautiful ciders that have these nuances and complexities from these beautiful cider apple trees that have been in the ground over 50 years. And similarly to wine, there can be this distinct nuance you get from older trees. Not always, but it’s really fun when you go and you see these giant trees that have been in the ground for longer than you’ve been alive.

Scott Cowan [00:17:17]:

I don’t know about that.

Emily Ritchie [00:17:18]:

Notes.

Scott Cowan [00:17:18]:

Okay, me, maybe not you. Yes. So the Northwest, you’re kind of painting this picture that we don’t like rules. We want to be creative. We want to I don’t want to say be defiant, but we’re going to push the envelope, and we’re going to try creating ciders using interesting combinations. You mentioned Habanero earlier. Pineapple watermelons. I’ve seen watermelon, ciders, cherry, perry, all these things. Red current currently. What are you seeing is the trend right now? Let’s just go back. We’ll try to rail this into Washington. What’s kind of the trend that the cider makers are? What are they doing right now? Is there kind of a noticeable trend that you can see? Because I can see from what I’m observing, and it might just be because I’m looking for it. I’m seeing a lot of barrel aged ciders. I’m seeing a lot of cider that’s finished off in a whiskey barrel, giving it that whiskey taste, which I find personally, I really like. I had one the other day. I honestly thought I was drinking bourbon. I didn’t think it was a cider. It was very whiskey forward.

Emily Ritchie [00:18:33]:

There was a lot of liquid left in that barrel when they made the cider.

Scott Cowan [00:18:38]:

Yeah, and I liked it, don’t get me wrong, but it was whiskey forward versus cider forward to me. Okay. So what are you seeing? What are the cideries working on now? What’s kind of the wave that we’re exploring these days?

Emily Ritchie [00:18:57]:

Yeah, I would say there’s kind of these two paths and they’re really defined by cider styles. So I’m seeing the average drinker in the Northwest in Washington, being way more educated around whatever they’re putting in their mouth than elsewhere. My sister lives on the east coast. I just went to visit her after the Pandemic. Finally got to get on a plane, go see her. And I’m appalled by what’s on the shelf there and what the bars have. And you ask for a cider and they’re like, well, we have some apple juice. I am so proud to be here where people know what they’re drinking and ask questions. And so what I’m seeing is that people are starting to see that there’s various categories that cider falls into. When you walk up to the bar, you don’t just say, I want a beer or I want a wine, and they hand you something. We are a little in that phase right now with cider is like, cider, I want a cider. And they’re like, great, here’s one. But if there’s a whole category just like beer, you have to specify, like, I want a hazy IPA or I want a Pilsner. Cider is the same. And I’m seeing people starting to appreciate that they’re like you. You’re like, I like barrel aged ciders, and I really like it. If it tastes like whiskey, there’s some nice smoky peatiness, I want that. Or I’m also seeing on the other spectrum because I’m finding cider is really steered by the distributor, right. The distributors have a lot of power. And where cider shows up on the shelf, you’re at your local grocery store. It’s usually right next to the beer here. Like, I was out in New York recently. It’s usually next to the wine there. And so depending on who your distributor is and what shop is, if you’re at Met Market versus you’re at Fred Meyer or something, you’re going to find something different in where it’s placed. And hopefully the cider will then correspond in that way. If it’s on the beer shelf, if it’s cool in a can, for example, hopefully you’ll find there’s more like barrel aged or there’s a flavor to it. Like there’s a lot of hopped ciders that are really beautiful, dry hopped with citrus, floral resiny notes. But then if you see it on the closer to wine, hopefully you’re also seeing more like single varietal ciders made with one specific apple. Like it could be the Kingston Black, which has those tannins and the acid, and you don’t need to add something to that. And it can show up really powerfully like a Sarah on its own as one grape. So cider can be we’re kind of in both camps, and it really depends on who’s selling it and how they’re selling it. But if you’re really big into wine. You can find those ciders that are really terroir driven. They’re really about the apples. They’re way drier usually. But if you’re like, nah, I’m like more in the fun house or even the type of day you’re like, I just want to hit the river, and I want something canned that I can just sit back and relax. I’m finding there’s people who know now that they, like, say, Spanish style, and they want that sort of the VA, the volatile acidity that sourness to it. And you can seek that out now, which is really fun.

Scott Cowan [00:22:34]:

I’m not familiar with the Spanish style, so can you elaborate on that?

Emily Ritchie [00:22:41]:

Yeah, so the Spaniards, again, it’s very regional. They make cider in Asturias and in the Basque country. And once you get in there, they’ll fight for the death. Like, who started making cider and who’s better go in with a grain of salt. But they make almost more like pet nat or natural ciders. They usually make it very fresh, like they crush the apples in the fall and they drink it in the spring. And if you go to Spain, if you go to these regions and you are looking for cider, there’s sort of a window of time when they will serve it to you, and it can be a slightly more sour. I find when you get Spanish cider here, it’s a little older. It’s put in bottle and sat on a ship so it becomes more ripe, but much like sour beers. Like, my fiancee is really into sour beers, like farmhouse sour. Spanish style ciders will have a lot of those qualities. There’ll still be fruity floral, not necessarily sweet, but there’s a lot of nuance there. And I’m starting to see some producers here now making what they’ll call Basque style cider or Spanish style sidra just to pay homage to the style that’s out there, which is very different from, say, the style in England or the style in France.

Scott Cowan [00:24:06]:

Okay, thank you. So if we’ve got 70 cider makers in Washington state ish 70, ish could be 65, it could be 82. We don’t really know for the sake of this episode. It’s okay. It’ll change tomorrow anyway, right?

Emily Ritchie [00:24:23]:

It will change tomorrow.

Scott Cowan [00:24:29]:

What are you noticing? These are, for the most part, my understanding. And I’m going to say what my understanding is, and you can correct me if I’m incorrect. Just be gentle. These seem like they’re mostly smaller companies. They’re not giant conglomerates. These are more I don’t want to say mom and pop, but Emily multigenerational families doing things. The father may own the orchards, and the kids may be working with dad to get the apples type thing. Younger generation. So how do I want to ask this question? I guess what I’m trying to figure out is, in your opinion, what’s, like, the production, how much production are these cideries making? Because, like, one guy we had on before, we had Jason Spears on from Locust Cider. And they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re producing a lot of cider, I believe. I mean, they’ve got multiple tap rooms. They’re kind of present in places you can see them in costco. They at least give the appearance that they’re a larger manufacturer. Whereas I just had on and it went live today, the episode went live today the day that we’re recording this, that went live with Union Hillsider.

Emily Ritchie [00:25:45]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:25:45]:

And they’re smaller, obviously. Much smaller. Is Union Hill more the norm, in your opinion, in size wise? Okay, so these are still kind of I’m struggling with the word I’m looking for. I was going to say backyard. I don’t mean it like but they’re smaller, smaller entities.

Emily Ritchie [00:26:06]:

Yeah. 60% of the cideries locally in Washington or Oregon, too, are in. That really small. I even call them nano cideries. They’re making under 10,000 gallons a year. It’s really small.

Scott Cowan [00:26:25]:

Okay, so 10,000 gallons don’t say 10,001, but what’s above 10,000? What’s the next level of production that you would, you know, if you can define it? So we got nano. What’s next?

Emily Ritchie [00:26:40]:

Then? I would say then there’s micro cideries and they’re maybe making, I mean, I’ve never defined it specifically, but like 50,000 gallons maybe. And then you still get to small batch making maybe 100,000 gallons. And then even the largest cideries locally, there’s only granted, the cider you’re going to find here on the shelves is almost all independent craft. Tiny, tiny guys. There are only two cideries making cider in our region that are owned by larger, like, international corporations. So if you find a cider, you’re generally going to pick up someone local, which is awesome. But yeah, they’re generally smaller. I see a lot of that. Like, we have a family farm. The cost of apples doesn’t really keep the lights on. And the kids are like, I see a real benefit to a value added product. Let’s try cider. And so you get folks like Union Hill, where they’ve got this beautiful orchard, and they’re now able to keep the land, stay there as a Emily, actually turn a profit. And they’ve got a tasting room. They’ve got beautiful apples. They’re growing very specifically. They’re very conscious about wanting to make cider. They’ve got cool varieties like these red flash varieties where you cut an apple in half and it’s pink inside. You see a lot of folks like that. They’re like, well, we have the land, maybe we even have the trees that are like 50 years old, but we can top graph them and make something that’s going to be more specific to this end product we want to make. And so one way that we as association, we’re helping these small guys, because the biggest hurdle, I will say making the cider is really not that difficult. You can find classes, there’s ways of learning how to make winer cider. But what I find is really, really hard is getting in front of the consumer. It’s finding that shelf space. Like I said, distributors often control that way. So if someone has a tasting room, it’s just like the concept of a farmers market, right? Like, if you’re going to find the small guys, you have to find a hub of that. So we created the Northwest Cider Club to help with that. We just launched in late 2020. So it’s really new for us, and we’re kind of finding out how to do that. But there’s a lot of folks out there that want to help the small independent craftsiders. And it’s so new. There’s so many brands. How do you pick? So we’re picking for you. We’re a trade association, nonprofit on staff. We have one of the first dozen palm oliers in the country, which is like a Somalier. She’s trained up. She knows her shit, she knows the knowledge around cider. And we are picking really high quality ciders. They’re for the most part very dry or up to three bricks. So drier on the drier side, and we’ll curate it around. Maybe it’s cider styles or apple varieties so you can learn something about it and learn something about the makers.

Scott Cowan [00:29:48]:

Okay, I’m going to ask you to pause because I’ve got two questions. One, to educate me and two, let’s give. Who is the person that is on staff that’s trained?

Emily Ritchie [00:29:59]:

Her name is Jana Daisy Ensign, and she has been in the biz for a good 20 years. She used to sell wine and beer and then moved into cider. And now I snagged her array. A couple of years ago, she joined our staff.

Scott Cowan [00:30:11]:

And the only reason I ask who and how is because I’m not going to be able to pronounce the word that you used.

Emily Ritchie [00:30:16]:

Palmelier.

Scott Cowan [00:30:17]:

Think of summerier.

Emily Ritchie [00:30:19]:

Summerier. Palm fruit is the term for apples. Palm fruit is a category. So we turned it into palmlier.

Scott Cowan [00:30:28]:

Palmier. Okay. And then you mentioned three bricks. That’s a term I’m kind of familiar with in the wine industry. But how does it apply in the cider industry?

Emily Ritchie [00:30:38]:

Oh, totally. There’s so much debate about how internally in The Insider is like, how do you talk about dryness? Right? Like, everyone I know, almost everyone. There are a few people out there who will admit that we are human and we love sweetness. But I used to sell cider at a farmer’s market and people would walk up. I only like a cider that’s dry. And I would give them the driest cider we had. It was barrel age. It has some serious tannins, had no bricks, zero bricks. And they’d be like, oh, what is this? I don’t like this. And that was because we don’t have a great shared language around what we mean by dry. People don’t want cloyingly sweet. And so they’re like, don’t give me the cloyingly sweet alka pop. But they’re also like, well, I don’t want it super stringent and going to dry my. Palate out. So there’s this all this debate about, well, how do we talk about that? How do we all get on the same page? And there isn’t a conclusive answer I can give you right now. But the way we’re talking about it with the Northwest Cider Club is in bricks level. And so it’s a way you can measure sweetness and actual sugar in a fruit or an end cider. And yes, wine will measure and they’ll actually go out and they’ll be at a crack of dawn, like testing the grapes. Like, what is the bricks level at? Is it the moment to pick? Apples were more looking for ripeness in the apples and whether they’re falling off the tree or not, for example. But bricks is one way to measure sweetness. And in fact, I think Seattle Cider company has a bar graph where they have bricks level written there and they’ll tell you where it is. Is it like dried a sweet based on the bricks of the end cider? And I’m seeing that more and more on cans or bottles.

Scott Cowan [00:32:29]:

All right, so let’s come back to the cider club, though, because this is kind of a cool concept. I’m reading from you’re offering the country’s best craft cider from more than 100 independent cider makers, from the Bitter Root Valley in Montana to Oregon’s Willamette Valley and the famed orchards in the one at you. Yeah, Montana, Oregon and Washington. I kind of poke fun at everybody. So tell us about this. How are you guys curating? Are these themed for the month that they’re coming out in? What would people receive if they were going to sign up?

Emily Ritchie [00:33:04]:

Yeah, so much like a wine club, it’s a quarterly subscription. So you sign up and you’re like, hey, I’m into this. I want you to send me cider quarterly. And you say either I want six bottles, four bottles, ten bottles. I think we even have twelve. So you pick what you want. There’s two different club ideas where you can have the discover box where you want six bottles that are usually smaller so they’re easier to drink on your own or cans and they’re more accessible price. Or we have an elevated cider club where you’re like, I’m a huge cider geek. I know exactly what I want. I want these 750 milliliter bottles, like wine style bottles, and I want the higher priced guys. I want the stuff that’s usually orchard, select or estate grown. And then you can mix and match if you’re like. Well, actually, I want to try them all. We can combo them or you can do multiple sets. We’re only picking from our members. So they’re independent cideries here in the Pacific Northwest. And then, yes, we are curating based on a different theme every month or every quarter. So last season was all cider styles. So as we were talking about, there are a lot of folks learning about various styles and this new one we just released which will be shipping out just after Labor Day. So think fall apples. So as I said, there’s a lot of folks and there’s a lot of Washington cideries in this next box that are estate grown. They’re growing very specifically for cider varieties. And we want to highlight that. There are some single varietal bottles, but then there’s some where people are very specifically like, I am making a crab apple cider and I’m going to put several crab apples together and blend those and show you what we’ve got. So it’s Nwciderclub.com. So Northwest Ciderclub. And really the idea is if you want to try cider but you don’t know where to start, you want someone who knows what they’re doing, will pick for you. That’s us. And this next season is going to be so fun and I’d love to dig into the various apples with you.

Scott Cowan [00:35:27]:

Great. Before we go there, I’ve got a question. Yes, I’m imagining a scenario. A box has been delivered to my doorstep. I open up the box, I’m finding an amazing bottle of cider that I just never heard of before and it’s not on the shelves at my local grocery store. Do you guys help make it so that people can like, I want more of this brand X Cider, whatever it might be, and if I can’t find it locally. So coming back to the distributor question, because I would think that the goal here is that we really like what we’re getting in the box and we’re going to want more of it.

Emily Ritchie [00:36:09]:

Absolutely.

Scott Cowan [00:36:10]:

So do you guys help with that?

Emily Ritchie [00:36:13]:

So there’s two ways. So one, I would say always if you know there’s a brand you like, tell your local store because they really respond to the customer saying, like, hey, I really like Union Hill. I really want you to bring them in. And the Cider Eagle will do their best, especially if they have a distributor in that area. Or a lot of these small guys are self distributing, which just blows my mind. They’re driving their product around every day, which is a lot of work.

Scott Cowan [00:36:38]:

Well, no, I was talking to Union Hill and I think this was a one off. So we were not going to say they did this, but they actually flew a delivery from Winachi to Cleon. Yeah, it was fine. I don’t think that that’s a money making endeavor in a very small plane because he mentioned he’s got a pilot’s license. I think they did it kind of for fun. Fly it to cleom. The ones I’ve been talking to, they’re self distributed.

Emily Ritchie [00:37:12]:

I told you. Passion, man. They are so excited about their product. They will decide to you.

Scott Cowan [00:37:19]:

I would have said they’d be a little more passionate if they would have, like, ridden the bike from when anchi overblow it to Clay Helman back with a wagon of cider. So, yes, we can reach out to our local our local grocery stores or bottle shops.

Emily Ritchie [00:37:33]:

Yeah. So the second part, though, is if you check out our map, so Nwcyder.com map or if you just end up@nwcider.com you’ll see it’s first thing, but we have a filter there’s. So there’s three things. One is there’s online shopping, and the bright side of the pandemic is a lot of folks started an online store. So you can often get the cider even if it’s made in Winachi. And you live in Seattle. A lot of folks are not distributing all the way to Seattle yet if they’re in Winachi, they’re really small guys. And so you can get that shipped to Seattle. Okay, so there’s a filter on our map, nwsider.com map, where you can say, I want to know who’s selling online. And you’re like, okay, great. Union Hill has a store. They’re getting a lot of attention today, but they’re a good example. And you can get it wherever you are. Nationally, there’s a lot of cideries that can ship to like 48 states that allow alcohol. So if you have people outside of Washington listening to this, it’s possible.

Scott Cowan [00:38:44]:

And we do. Yeah, we do. Well, yeah, I’m looking here like Eaglemont Wine insider in Port Townsend. They’ve got an online store. Dragon’s head cider in Vashon islands got an online store. Alpen fire Cider in Port Townsend. Again, online store.

Emily Ritchie [00:38:59]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:38:59]:

Okay, so this is great that you’re helping.

Emily Ritchie [00:39:02]:

Absolutely. And then a lot of the ciders, they’re so small, if you write to them directly, they’ll tell you where they are. And many of them on their websites have cider finders and you can see what store has it. A lot of local bottle shops are where it’s at when you want to get small brands.

Scott Cowan [00:39:18]:

Okay.

Emily Ritchie [00:39:19]:

But yeah, I would say for those listening outside of Washington, 70%, I would guess, of the cideries in Washington do not distribute outside of the state. So it’s really fun that way because it’s very regional. You get to visit Washington and bring something back you can’t get anywhere else. But like I said, online is we’re really into that market now.

Scott Cowan [00:39:42]:

Okay, so let’s circle back because I interrupted you this coming fall box. You wanted to talk about the apples.

Emily Ritchie [00:39:47]:

Yeah. Okay. So apples, like you said, with the Lost Apple Project, they all have these really beautiful stories and histories. And it’s really fun not only to taste an apple and know what it’s going to make. Insider like you’re looking at the acid, the sweetness and the tannins, but also it’s really fun to know the backstory where an apple came from or who bred it and was it from the US. Or was it from somewhere farther away. So we made an entire box this new season. It’s all on apple varietals. And one of the apples that has a really fascinating story and was almost lost is the Harrison apple. And we’ve got a featured cider in there from Rootwood cider. They’re in Manson off of Lake Shelan and they’ve got an estate grown Harrison apple cider. It’s a single varietal in there. It’s beautiful. It’s got these fruity characteristics. It’s light, it’s lower ABV than like a wine. It’s probably around 7%. They’re growing 500 Harrison trees. They’re some of the only Harrison apple trees in the country because this apple was almost lost. So this apple, before the American Revolution, people loved this for cider. And Thomas Jefferson writes about it at some point and says, this is a really special apple. I want to make sure I have it on my estate. So it was well known as an apple that you could just take one variety and make a good cider out of. And then at some point it disappeared. The country shifted the demographics of who was here. We had a lot more beer drinkers come into the country and cider kind of went on the downhill and with it cider varieties. But luckily there are some apple geeks out there like the Lost Orchard folks. And the Harrison was rediscovered on one tree. There was one Harrison tree in New Jersey in the luckily it was an apple geek who was like, we’ve got to save this and we’ve been able to propagate it again. I don’t know if you know this, but apples, every seed in an apple is going to give you a different apple.

Scott Cowan [00:42:05]:

I did not know that.

Emily Ritchie [00:42:06]:

To make exactly that Harrison, you actually have to graft it. So you have to take cyanwood, which is the little baby branch. You cut it off and you put it on a new apple tree. It’s like cloning them. Because if you just pick an apple that’s the Harrison and then plant that seed, you’re not going to get a Harrison tree from it.

Scott Cowan [00:42:26]:

I had no idea about that. That’s fascinating to me, actually. That’s kind of mind blowing, right?

Emily Ritchie [00:42:32]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:42:32]:

And I don’t want to go into the science of it because it’ll make my head hurt. Let’s just keep this fun and light. But that’s actually fascinating and maybe we have to revisit that. So I think this is really cool. And I’m looking at so you’ve got a Porter’s perfection.

Emily Ritchie [00:42:45]:

So that one’s a fun one. Can I tell you about it? So Porter’s Perfection is this crazy apple that you can recognize on apple trees because they fuse together when they’re growing. Like instead of one orb, you get two orbs growing as what is that twin called?

Scott Cowan [00:43:05]:

Siamese twin. Is that conjoined?

Emily Ritchie [00:43:08]:

Yeah, conjoined.

Scott Cowan [00:43:08]:

Maybe conjoined. Conjoined.

Emily Ritchie [00:43:12]:

Or they might even do three. Right. These apples are crazy. I don’t know why they do that, but they’re a quintessential, bitter sweet apple and they’ve got a lot of tannin to them. And so we have two Porters Perfection ciders in there. One, the apples are grown near Winachi, and one, they’re in tiatin. So outside of yakima. And so I always find I geek out about this, where you get to try the single varietal grown in one place, and you go however many miles away, and you get the nuances there as well as the cider maker doing different things, right?

Scott Cowan [00:43:52]:

This is really cool. This box looks like it’s kind of a fun thing. And I think it’s a great way that you’re helping the cideries get their product out to other interested people that might not I have not tried any cider from Port Townsend, for example. That might be delicious.

Emily Ritchie [00:44:10]:

You are in luck, man.

Scott Cowan [00:44:11]:

Yeah, I’m in luck that I haven’t tried.

Emily Ritchie [00:44:13]:

Yeah, you’ve got a treat ahead of you.

Scott Cowan [00:44:16]:

Okay. All right. Yeah, see, so that’s see, I haven’t tried that, so that’s cool. I could get a box, and who knows? That box might have something from Port Townsend, might have something from Montana. That’s fine. It’s kind of fun. No, I’m just saying I don’t go to Montana.

Emily Ritchie [00:44:31]:

Got that word out there.

Scott Cowan [00:44:34]:

It’s a joke. I’m kidding. Montana is a beautiful state. It really is.

Emily Ritchie [00:44:38]:

Absolutely beautiful.

Scott Cowan [00:44:39]:

But our thing is all Washington. So I got to ask you, obviously, you’ve said you like to geek out about this and all that. Where did this come from? Where did this geeky passion for apples, and how did you curate this?

Emily Ritchie [00:44:55]:

Gosh, I mean, I’ve been geeky about food for a long time. There’s just something marvelous when you put something really good in your mouth and you get the backstory. You’re like, well, this farmer found this seed in Tuscany, and they brought it back, and they’ve been growing this crazy red radicio or whatever, and the story is really wonderful. And then if the food product is really good or beverage, I’m all about it. And so in high school, I was teaching myself how to bake bread. I just love getting my hands dirty doing things like that.

Scott Cowan [00:45:29]:

Okay?

Emily Ritchie [00:45:29]:

And with my British connections, I was over in England, and I had a challenge to myself. What is England doing that’s good to eat or drink? And you could roll your eyes and be like, well, nothing. But actually, if you’re a little more enlightened, you’re like, okay, I’ll work at this. They’ve got incredible cheddar. For example. I went and visited some cheddar makers, beautiful cheesemakers. And I was like, oh, actually, there’s this cider thing. And I’ve had a little in Portland and what is this? And I fell in love. They have this a cider root in Herefordshire. There was this incredible cider maker out there who spent a lot of time with me. His name is Tom Oliver. He makes Oliver cider. We spent, like, 2 hours just tasting through ciders and talking about tasting notes, and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I thought the whole wine notes was just like, BS. I remember telling someone in college, he was like, oh, what notes do you get? And I was like, That’s BS. You’re making all that up, but sorry to say, but it’s not made up. And if you spend some time paying attention to what’s in your glass or what’s on your palate, I was totally wrong. There is actually you get those nuances, and you don’t just make it up like, oh, notes with cherry and oak, I suppose. This guy in England was awesome, and he spent the time and then he was like, I meet a lot of people who come through my tasting room, but you seem extra passionate. Maybe you should do something with this. So I came back home to the Pacific Northwest. I won’t tell you I live in Portland. I’m so lucky that there’s actually a thriving industry that I can be here to support and back and chitchat with. These makers are so passionate. I learn something new every time I hang out with them.

Scott Cowan [00:47:24]:

All right, you saw me kind of make a chuckle about British food and the bad reputation has, which is completely.

Emily Ritchie [00:47:32]:

Wrong, but it is reputation.

Scott Cowan [00:47:37]:

But at the same time, cheese is delicious. Their ciders are great. They make some good beer. I mean, they’ve got things going for them.

Emily Ritchie [00:47:47]:

It’s not completely bad until they serve you French fries with the lasagna and you’re like, what are you doing, man?

Scott Cowan [00:47:54]:

Are you kidding me?

Emily Ritchie [00:47:55]:

No, I’ve had that.

Scott Cowan [00:47:56]:

Yes, with lasagna. Okay. All right.

Emily Ritchie [00:48:02]:

Talk about no rules.

Scott Cowan [00:48:04]:

Yeah, a lot of carbs. A lot of carbs going there. All right, for your palate, what type of cider? Where do you fall? Do you like the sweet cider? Do you like the dusty, super dry stuff? Where are you at these days? Because it might change. I mean, tomorrow you might be in the mood for something else. So at the time of recording kind of where do you fall on the spectrum of ciders?

Emily Ritchie [00:48:33]:

Yeah, well, clearly I’m not going to give you, like, I like this X, but what I found is that the situation really dictates what I want to drink, and I drink a lot of cider, but also I drink other things. I won’t tell you what other things I drink, but there’s a situation where you’re, like, just at a barbecue in someone’s backyard, and you just want something sessionable. You’re not really thinking about what you’re drinking. You’re just having fun. And I’ll want something really bubbly. I’ll want something with a little sweetness. I’m definitely not I’m in that anti cloyingly, sweet category camp, but I’m like a one bricks sort of a lady. I don’t want it very sweet at all, but I know people who are like, give me the juice. I really want it to taste like juice. And that’s cool. There’s cider for everyone, right? But then if I’ve taken the time to make a really beautiful cheese plate and I want it to pair well, I probably want something that’s more like a single varietal. And I love learning about what apples will do and there’s some magic to cheese and cider where you just really can’t go wrong. They just get along well in your mouth. Like, you can’t go wrong putting cider in your glass and some cheese in front of you. And there’s something about the fat and cheese which would go into like, pork and other fatty things that the acid insider really mixes well. If I’m taking the time to make a beautiful cheese plate or whatever, I also want cider that I’ve taken time to think about and learn and single varietals or a blend orchard estate, that’s where it’s at. Where someone else has also taken a lot of time and thought and harvested and matured that cider over some time.

Scott Cowan [00:50:28]:

So I’m trying to break my habit of starting every question with the word so. And I just did it. What is another food pairing that goes well with cider that might not that might seem unusual when you say it like you just said, cheese and cider go really well together. And I absolutely agree with you on that. That seems obvious to me. Can you suggest a couple, one, two other pairings that might not seem so obvious?

Emily Ritchie [00:51:00]:

Yeah, well, pork is the other one I said, and that I would definitely highlight. Like whether you’re going bacon or you’re going a pork slider or something. That’s easy peasy. But I would also say one of my very favorites. And my fiancee will give me a hard time. If I need comfort food, I want Thai food. I’m all about Thai food. Salad rolls really do it for me. Pad Thai, curries, all of that. So there are a lot of lighter ciders that will pair well with spicy or just the lighter, well balanced flavors in Thai food. I loved visiting Thailand. I took a cooking course and they really talked about the balances they’ve got the salty, the sweet, spicy. And is it, umami? I’m trying to remember what they put in front of me, but I think the umami would be kind of like the fish sauce or the dried shrimp and they actually on the table. Even if you’re buying from a food cart, will have four things. Little jars in front of you. So you can doctor your food to be in the balance you want, but they also give it to you well balanced with those four in front of you. So all to say, the Thai in that region, they really know what’s up when it comes to food, it’s well balanced. I really like to pair that with a lighter cider. And I say light, like, not heavy. Barrel age, necessarily something that will hold up to something a little more spicy, some fruitiness, a lower ABV also. Because if you think well, I think of Thailand. I was really, really hot when I was there the whole time. You want something a little lighter that’ll just refresh you refreshing.

Scott Cowan [00:52:48]:

How do you feel about, like, perries are you personally a fan of Perry?

Emily Ritchie [00:52:54]:

Huge fan. And something fun. Another fun fact for you that you may not know is pears have various sugars in them that make them sweet. And sorbitol is one of them that’s just naturally in a pear. And sorbitol for some reason, yeast can’t deal with that so it doesn’t get fermented out. So perries usually have a little bit of sweetness left that a cider won’t have. And so if you ferment Perry all the way dry, it’s still got a little bit of just a light note of sweetness from the sorbital we had.

Scott Cowan [00:53:30]:

A recorded an episode with Peter at Snowdrift.

Emily Ritchie [00:53:33]:

Peter is awesome.

Scott Cowan [00:53:35]:

And that episode will be live by the time this episode goes live. So people might have listened to it ahead of time. But we were sitting outside of their tasting room, tractor was going off and it was not the most the audio quality was probably not to where I would like it, but he was great. But we were talking and I’ve had the Perry that they have and I’m drawing a blank as to the official title. And it’s not an inexpensive bottle. It’s like a bottle of wine. I mean, it’s priced like a lot of wines, which is fine, but it’s not just a I would argue it’s.

Emily Ritchie [00:54:12]:

A lot more accessible price wise than a Washington wine. You’re going to find ciders that are like half that price usually.

Scott Cowan [00:54:21]:

But he was telling me the process that they go through. Yeah, and I was like staggered by the amount of manual labor, so much involved in that pear and the years.

Emily Ritchie [00:54:38]:

That it takes this thing.

Scott Cowan [00:54:40]:

It was amazing.

Emily Ritchie [00:54:41]:

Plants pears for your heirs, because pears are so slow growing. And that’s literally what Peter has done. Peter was one of the founding members of the Northwest Cider Association, so he’s one of those seven that was here at the beginning. And his orchard is 30 some years old. And it’s like mature and producing and there’s so much flavor. And he was there before when everyone was like, you’re crazy, you’re making cider. What is that?

Scott Cowan [00:55:09]:

But yeah, his story about that was just fascinating to me, his enthusiasm for it. It’s not like gushing out of him. But you can just absolutely tell this man is incredibly passionate about what he’s doing and the products that they bring to market. It was a lot of fun.

Emily Ritchie [00:55:30]:

And did he tell about how temperamental pears are too? Just like when they snow on your counter and you’re like waiting for them to ripen, you kind of have to watch them because as soon as you look away, they’re going to ripen it’s.

Scott Cowan [00:55:42]:

Because kind of like an avocado.

Emily Ritchie [00:55:43]:

Like an avocado to me. Well, even worse, pears ripen from the middle out. And so when you’re like pressing on the outside, you’re like, well, it’s not quite ripe. It’s because it’s the middle that’s going to tell you so you have to check the neck, as the pair commission says, check the neck. But with pressing pairs it’s even worse because they go from rock hard you can’t do anything with them to like ready for about 5 seconds and then they just turn to mush. And actually if you get too mushy back in the olden days, they actually add straw or hay, I can’t remember which one doesn’t have the seeds because you need to create pathways for juice to exit the press. And if you have just sneery mushy pear, it will not exit the press and it will drive a cider maker crazy.

Scott Cowan [00:56:35]:

I had no idea. No, he did not elaborate on that. To me, that makes it even more impressive now. I did not know.

Emily Ritchie [00:56:47]:

Those guys are awesome. I love snowdrift. They are forerunners. They’ve done cider really well for a long time in a way that has really benefited me and the association. They’re really open to sharing their knowledge and their passion.

Scott Cowan [00:57:05]:

Yeah, it comes through when you go there. We were there for a tasting one day and he was the one serving us everything. And he was great. And so I approached him. I said, hey, I would you like to be on a podcast? He’s like, sure. I think he’s saying, you have a podcast now, people will talk to you. It’s interesting. Could I have asked him, hey, you want to talk to me for an hour about cider making? He probably got kind of busy, but he was like, yeah, sure.

Emily Ritchie [00:57:32]:

No, they would say yes.

Scott Cowan [00:57:34]:

No, but I’m joking. But we were scheduling back and forth and he’s like, hey, I’ve got these things going on. We’ll come. And so I went out there. The grounds are beautiful and he’s just a nice guy. Same with Union Hill and Ben up in Shelan at Steelhead.

Emily Ritchie [00:57:53]:

Oh, Ben. Yeah. Steelhead is so fun. And they’ve got tasting rooms so you can try for a bar. Many brands. He’s so great at creating community that way. And they have live music all the time.

Scott Cowan [00:58:06]:

Right. He was our very first guest on the podcast. When somebody else was hosting it, we went up there and he was great and we had a lot of fun there and kind of comes back to that second generation parents have the orchard. Now he’s doing something. Then I’m going to ask you this and we’ll put people on the spot. This will be fun. So I’ve noticed a thread with two of the cider makers, ben admitted. And I think I haven’t listened to that episode in a long time. I don’t even know if it’s up, so I might have to go find it and republish it. But Ben admitted so when he was in college, he started making cider because it was a cheap alcohol to get. It was cheaper to make cider than it was to buy. And he went to WSU. So it was kind of a party the joke, it’s a party school. So I thought that it was funny that he was making cider in college and in Union Hill, their very first batch, they were letting it age in a closet. And they were like, yeah, this wasn’t very good. And so Ben’s kind of like, it’s not the best thing in the world either. So is that how cider makers are getting started? Or college students looking for I have.

Emily Ritchie [00:59:13]:

Heard that story a few times. I made cider kind of like that. It was after college, but I was dating a guy who was like, oh, I know how to make cider. You just throw some yeast in and then you throw it in a 90 degree room and you’ll make cider. And it was terrible. But you can ferment sugar into alcohol that way. It’s true. But I think a lot of cider makers got in just because they tried it somewhere and you kind of get that bug and you’re like, wow, that’s so different and unusual. I guess we’re all kind of hipsters. We’re like, oh, I want something different and unusual. And it’s super local. And then it’s got this base palette that you can add so much to. You can add hops and get some floral notes or like I said, you can add berries or whatnot? Or just barrel age it. But the base product is so malleable. You can do a lot with that, right?

Scott Cowan [01:00:07]:

No, I just think it’s I’m kind of poking fun, but I think it’s I like the creativity and the ingenuity and the low barrier to entry.

Emily Ritchie [01:00:18]:

Yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:00:22]:

And back when I was in college, brewing our own beer or cider, that wasn’t an option. The equipment wasn’t available like it is now. I mean, now home brewing. All my friends are home brewers and they’re brewing their own beers. Some are making ciders. So things have changed. So what haven’t we talked about? I feel like we’ve covered a lot, but I want to make sure that we’ve covered as much. What else? Did we miss anything? What haven’t I asked you that I should ask?

Emily Ritchie [01:00:56]:

I’m sure we could talk for two more hours, but I think we covered a lot. I would just say one more thing about the map.

Scott Cowan [01:01:06]:

It’s very cool.

Emily Ritchie [01:01:07]:

Yeah. Our Northwest cider map is really easy for you to make your own route. So if you’re going traveling anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, there are cideries there. Really? So if you’re like, I really want to go to the Okanagan and BC. You can check out the map and make your own route, see how long it takes to go between producers. You can see what their opening hours are and closing, because it’s all on the Google platform, so it’s connected to their business. And I would say that is hands down the most fun thing you can do. Like when you go and meet the cider maker. You see their orchard, you visit their tasting room. It’s almost always the cider maker there serving you, like you said with Peter at Snow Drip, because these are really small operations. So you get to meet the person who really knows about the product. You see their passion. You get to see the place because if you see an urban tasting room in Seattle, you’re going to get one vibe. If you see an orchard out in Shellan, you’re going to get a different vibe. You kind of know where they’re coming from. Maybe they’re really into sustainability. And you see they’ve got solar panels everywhere and wind generated and whatnot. Or you’ll see that they’re really into unique flavors because half the team is from Taiwan or something. And you’ve got like a bitter, melon flavor. That’s a thing, too. That’s a cidery in Seattle. So I love, love, love going to visit cidery. And if you know already this summer you’re going out to the Oregon coast or something, just check out the Northwest cider map and visit and make it as part of your day, your hike and your tasting room, and then you’re staying at a cool hotel or whatever. It’s really fun to just meet the maker and see what’s up and see what usually they have ciders there that can’t get anywhere else because they’re just experimenting, and it’s only at the tasting room.

Scott Cowan [01:02:59]:

All right, so where can people find go ahead and give the URLs. We’ll put them in the show notes below. But go ahead, tell them once again, where can they find the Northwest cider Club?

Emily Ritchie [01:03:09]:

Yeah, so the Northwest Cider Club, we make it really easy Nwsiderclub.com and the map. We also try and make that really easy Nwcyder.com map. The two websites are just that. One is the trade association, the nonprofit Northwest Cider association, and the other one, we made a website for the club specifically. We hope that you’ll subscribe and have fun and support the cideries, and all of the money that we make on the cider club gets reinvested right back into the cider industry. So it’s a fun little closed circuit in that way.

Scott Cowan [01:03:43]:

Very cool. Well, thank you so much. This is fun. I learned a lot, which is why I do this, because I get to ask the questions that I want to know and somebody can listen to if they wish. I always appreciate it, and I learned a ton here. You have been great, and thank you. I appreciate your time.

Emily Ritchie [01:03:59]:

I really appreciate being on here. This is fun. And go washington.

Scott Cowan [01:04:04]:

There you go. Go Washington.