Oh cider. Like wine, I once disliked cider. Silly old me. I guess we’re all 5 once. Kidding.
My increasing verve for cider over the years made me long for having an actual scene in Alberta, which I suspect is in its fertile cesspool infancy. There are folks passionate about the stuff. There are folks learning and making the stuff. There a little pockets of cider peeps obsessed with crushing and pressing in the fall. There just aren’t any craft producers here. Yet.
Enter Merridale. They’re, oh, 1300km from my home, but the nearest craft cider gig. I dig what they do. Their ciders tend to flaunt lovely light tannins like one would see in the Old World. They do many bottlings of different styles. And you can’t get it here, because they sell out without distributing further than an hour away.
Their recently-won fight with law makers to create a reasonable environment for entrepreneurs to make a distilled cider brandy just makes me love them that much more deeply. Props.
5 Comments on “Merridale Cider”
I had their house cider at a pub in parksville this summer and it was lovely. Thanks for the backstory.
Great to hear someone speak so thoughtfully about cider. Can’t wait to press this year!
I too am a HUGE fan of Merridale Cidery. My daughter and niece introduced me to this amazing Cidery one day when I was visiting them and I fell in love with their tasting room, bistro, traditional methods and of course their beautiful pup! Now daughter and niece are back in YYC and I have been unable to find a pub on my visit in Victoria that carries their ciders on the menu. Darn, I just had something quite horrible, on to the next pub!
Once again you are finding the cool things that people want to see. Great stuff.
Hi Kevin,
We also had this cider in Parksville this past summer when we were there for our daughters wedding. Have you found a way to bring it to Alberta (Edmonton in particular)? If so, we would be very interested.
So delicious!!!