This month I am delighted to introduce you to South Hill Cider, a small boutique farm winery just outside of Ithaca that produces exceptional hard ciders. Founder Steve Selin focuses on rare and forgotten heirloom varietals to craft ciders with the same care and precision that a traditional winemaker would.

His approach yields ciders that are expressively complex, often bone dry, and a revelation to novices (like me). Some are still, whereas others are made using Methode Champenoise techniques with fermentation occurring in the bottle before manual disgorgement. Often, they mature on the lees for several years before being released.

I am so excited for this, and invite you to discover the world of ciders through this artisanal lens.

— Cheers, RP

In their own words:

Steve has been bottling his own cider since 2003. As a musician firmly grounded in traditional American Old-time music, Steve can’t help but point out the many parallels to cider: in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, both cider and Old-time music were staples of American culture, only to be sidelined by more mechanized and industrial rivals. Working in Finger Lakes winery tasting rooms for a decade as a musician is where his music and cidermaking coalesced. Collaborating with winemakers elevated the quality of the ciders. The names of many of South Hill Cider’s bottlings are therefore inspired by many musical references.

Their home orchard started out as a collaboration with an adjoining landowner who permitted us to plow his fallow fields and to plant it to apple trees. This land, being only 4 miles from downtown Ithaca, is under intense development pressure. So, in an effort to protect it from subdivision and development in perpetuity, they successfully have it protected by a conservation easement. They have never applied synthetic chemicals to the farm and use only organic certified inputs.

Learn more and order directly at: https://www.southhillcider.com/