Cider Rules

Hard cider. Once the nation’s most common alcoholic drink, you’ll be hard-pressed to find palatable examples in America today. They’re even tougher to locate in Pennsylvania, where the Liquor Control Board has so bollixed the distribution rules that by the time a $5 bottle of applejack makes it to your table, you’ve paid $25 or more. But there are some work-arounds, some of which are even legal.

Hard cider is a complex and diverse beverage, which apparently is why the dolts on the liquor board finds it so perplexing. The alcoholic content of cider ranges from the low wattage of beer to the high amperage of cognac. One importer -- with offices in Philadelphia -- says it gave up distributing cider in Pennsylvania and sells it exclusively elsewhere.

It’s bizarre to have to join a dining society to drink something that Americans before the 20th century grew up on. It used to be that most apples grown here went into cider. It was trees for cider apples -- not the eating kind -- that Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) spread far and wide.

But cider’s complexities are what make it worth pursuing, and that’s why a gaggle of gourmets from the Philadelphia chapter of Slow Food International (www.slowfoodusa.org) recently met to savor that which the liquor board makes so difficult to sample. The Slow Food folks met at the Creperie Beau Monde, Sixth and Bainbridge, to sip ciders and nibble on crepes. The buckwheat crepes -- savory, stuffed with pork; sweet, filled with chestnut cream and lemon butter -- are standard fare at Beau Monde. The ciders are not.

Marnie Old, a wine consultant who’s worked with Stephen Starr, brought in the ciders; two from France, two from America. She capped the meal with a homemade Pommeau, a one-shot, high-test concoction of her own imagining that I’d describe as hallucinatory.

One American brand, "Woodchuck Draft," may be familiar to you. By comparison, that sweet wine cooler kind of drink sucked. Paired against it was the dry, effervescent "Brut Tendre" from France’s Loire Valley. (Moore Bros. in Pennsauken, 856-317-1177, has some available.) The difference was equivalent to having a chat with a simpleton or a conversation with quirky genius. The other ciders, like "Cidre Bouche Brut de Normande," which you can taste at Monk’s or buy through beer distributors, and the unavailable-in-Pennsylvania, unfiltered, woodsy American from Farnum Hill "Still Semi-Dry," were intense and noble.

Sure, I think, beer is fascinating. But cider rules -- or at least it would if it weren’t for the sorry state we’re in.

-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there