Hudson Valley Wineries and Cider Makers Featured in SeriousEats.com

CONGRATULATIONS to Aaron Burr Cider, Brookview Station, Breezy Hill Orchards, and Hudson-Chatham Winery for appearing in this piece! Awesome!!!

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6 New York State Beverage      Makers You Should Know

Breezy Hill Orchard

Breezy Hill Orchard sells an array of apple products: pastries of all sorts, sweet cider, and a delicately effervescent hard cider that I've been sipping as a substitute for dessert. The brew, available by the growler, is on the sweeter side but not overly so, and has layers of baked and caramelized apples given lift and brightness by a gentle carbonation. Open this growler slowly: it'll bubble up fast on you, even if you unscrew with care.

Hudson-Chatham Winery

Though Millbrook Winery is the most talked-about spot in the immediate area, Ghent's Hudson-Chatham Winery has also received acclaim and awards in its short history. The winery boasts the now-classic story of a husband and wife, wine fans both, who said, "Let's just start a winery! It'll be a fun part-time thing!" As they sell at several markets a week, host innumerable events at the winery, and, oh, also make wine, Carlo and Dominique DeVito are re-thinking the part time bit. Their Baco Noir, made with a hardy grape that can withstand the Hudson Valley's less-than-ideal weather, is deep with sour cherry and dried fruit flavors, smooth, and refreshing—an autumnal treat also available in an oak-aged Reserve edition.

Brookview Station Winery

Like Harvest Spirits and Harvest Moon, Brookview Station Winery is an extension of an orchard operation looking to diversify its products to 1) increase profits from extra fruit and 2) draw tourists in year-round. Their still apple and fruit wines run the gamut from semi-dry to dessert sweet, and are geared towards table wines that happen to play well with food.

They recently started brewing a hard cider that's fresh, clean, and light—a little like the PBR of cider (comparably priced, too), which I mean in the very best way. Most large-scale ciders available in the States are grossly sweet and taste more of the steel tanks they're fermented in than actual apples; here's an honest brew made for gulping after mowing the lawn on a hot summer day. At their tasting room, you can also have what they playfully call a "Hudson Valley Kir": a cup of hard cider with a spare pour of their very own cassis.

Aaron Burr Cider

When I brought a bottle of Aaron Burr Cider to the office—a find from a trip to the New Amsterdam Market in NYC—it admittedly received mixed responses. But it may be just the thing for an appetite-stimulating pre-dinner sip. The dry cider is aged in bourbon barrels and made barely effervescent with tiny, Champagne-like bubbles. You smell sweet oak and corn on a whiff, but a taste is all dry, funky cider apples—until the very end when the bourbon comes back for a sweet boozy kick.

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

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