I was in Dallas, TX last month. I was en route to Austin, TX to take in the U.S. Formula 1 Grand Prix. This has been something of an annual pilgrimage, since the U.S. GP found a home in Austin in 2012. My travel pattern has been to fly into Dallas (it is considerably cheaper than flying into Austin) and spend the night with my good friend Mike. The next day, he and I drive to Austin for race weekend.
Mike lives in the city of Corinth, a suburb of Dallas. During previous visits we had visited a number of craft breweries within an Uber ride of where he lived. This time, we decided to venture farther afield, take the train into Dallas, and visit a couple of craft breweries there. We alighted the train in Dallas’s Deep Ellum neighborhood. Deep Ellum is a fascinating neighborhood. It was established in 1873, east of downtown Dallas, as both a residential and commercial neighborhood. In the late 19th century it was home to the largest manufacturer of cotton-processing equipment, the Continental Gin Company, in the United States. In 1914, Henry Ford chose the neighborhood as the location for one of his first automobile assembly plants outside of Michigan. During the first half of the twentieth century, it was a “hotbed” for jazz and blues music. Today, Deep Ellum, remains at the epicenter of the Dallas music scene. It also has a vibrant arts community and has, since 1974, hosted the Deep Ellum Arts Festival. It also home to a number of craft breweries, a couple of which we visited. Our first stop was Braindead Brewing. This was followed by a visit to Deep Ellum Brewing Company.
After leaving Deep Ellum, wandering the neighborhood, we came across Trinity Cider. Neither of us had been to a cidery before, so we decided to give it a try. As we learned from the bartender, the cidery had been open less than a week. In fact, it had opened on October 12, five days before we visited. The menu had a selection of five different ciders to choose from. I opted for a glass of “Grow a Pear”. Trinity plans to specialize in dry ciders. I enjoy cider, although I only drink it very occasionally. I used to drink a lot more of it, especially as an undergraduate student at the University of Glasgow.
The origns of cider are unclear. While their is evidence that apple trees grew along the Nile River as early as 13,000 BC, there is no corresponding evidence to suggest that the Egyptians used them in the production of cider. When the Romans arrived in the British Isles in 55 BC, the local population were already drinking a cider-like drink, made from apples. In the Americas, cider was produced by the early colonists. At the start of the eighteenth century, the New England region was producing over three hundred thousand gallons of cider per year, and by 1850, per capita cider consumption in Massacussets was an impressive thirty-five gallons. As the population migrated west, however, and as German immigrants started to arrive in waves and settled in urban areas such as Milwaukee, WI, St. Louis, MO, and Cincinnati, OH, beer (particularly Lager) increased in popularity. As beer gained a foothold among city dwellers, cider developed a reputation as the poor farmers beverage.
Today, North America accounts for eleven percent of the cider consumed worldwide. By far the largest consumers of cider are the Europeans, who consume fifty-seven percent of the world’s cider.
It is, of course, tempting to compare cider with craft beer. An estimate in October, 2017 suggested that there were somewhere in the region of seven hundred cideries in the United States. This compares with over six thousand craft breweries. New York, with eighty-three, has the largest number of cideries, followed by California and Michigan, with seventy-eight and seventy-one cideries respectively. Washington (sixty-six cideries) and Oregon (fifty-seven cideries) round out the top five. Annual cider sales in the United States currently run at about $1.3 billion. Craft beer sales in 2017 were $26 billion. In terms of the total alcoholic beverage category, cider accounts for only 0.4% of sales in the United States. This is, by no means, a large market share, but it is a vast improvement on the 0.06% market share that cider held during the first few years of the current millennium.
In recent years, cider’s popularity has increased. After years of moderate growth, cider experienced an upsurge in sales between 2011 and 2015. The U.S. cider market went from 5.6 million cases in 2011 to 28.9 million cases in 2015: that is an increase of 416%. By 2016, it looked like its popularity may be on the wane. However, the most recent data from 2018 suggests that cider may be experiencing a rebound in the U.S. market. According to a recent study by Nielsen, cider appears to be most popular among 21-34 year olds. The same study found that beer appealed to a slightly older demographic – 35-44 year olds.
Cider produced by local and regional cideries (craft cideries) account for approximately twenty-five percent of the cider sold in the Unitrd States. The remaining seventy-five percent is produced by large multinational corporations such as AB InBev and Heineken. AB InBev’s cider brands include Virtue, a “craft cider, made with 100% Michigan apples”. Virtue is located in Fennville, MI. AB InBev’s cider portfolio also in includes the more well-known Stella Artois Cidre.
Boston Beer Company, the nation’s second largest craft brewer, produces its own line of cider – Angry Orchard. Debuting as Hardcore Cider in 1997, a rebranding resulted in the launch of the Angry Orchard Label in 2012. Angry Orchrard is an important part of the Boston Beer Company’s portfolio of drinks. In the third quarter of 2018, Boston Beer Company announced a 24.2% increase in revenue, compared with the same quarter in 2017. This increase was driven not by Samuel Adams beer (whose sales were down), but by sales of its non-beer products, including its Angry Orchard ciders.
As with beer, there are a number of different styles of cider. The United States Association of Cider Makers (USACM) recognizes ten distinct styles of cider. These styles are modern cider, heritage cider, modern perry, heritage perry, fruit cider, spiced cider, hopped cider, wood-aged cider, sour cider, and ice cider. Modern and heritage ciders are made with apples, while modern and heritage perries are made with pears (a perry is a pear cider). Fruit ciders are those made with non-pome fruits (essentially fruits other than apples or pears). Spiced ciders are those with spices, herbs and/or botanicals added, while hopped ciders, as the name suggests, have hops added. Wood-aged ciders have been aged in wooden barrels. Finally, sour ciders are made intentionally sour using bacterial fermentation. Cider does have the advantage that it is naturally gluten free – an attraction for some consumers.
It is difficult to predict the future of cider in the United States. It is likely to remain a minority alcohol, but will probably continue to benefit from the growing interest in locally-produced craft alcohol. Part of the challenge for cider is that, for a large part of American history, it has struggled to be mainstream. Looking into the foreseeable future, this is likely to continue to be the case.