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Cider Digest #1185
Subject: Cider Digest #1185, 10 December 2004
From: cider-request@talisman.com
Cider Digest #1185 10 December 2004
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Reply to Digest #1184 ("drcath@tiac.net")
SCOTUS on interstate wine shipments (Kathy Hutchins)
Re: cider perception and taste (Dick Dunn)
Re: US Supreme Court case on interstate winery shipments ("Gary Awdey")
Supreme Court (Ken Schramm)
Re: Cider Digest #1184, 8 December 2004 (Bill Rhyne)
Supreme Court cases re sale of wine from outside state (Bill Velek)
hotmail user caution (Cider Digest Janitor)
Virginia Cider? ("Richard & Susan Anderson")
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Reply to Digest #1184
From: "drcath@tiac.net" <drcath@tiac.net>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 22:54:46 -0500
Dave Houseman writes;
"...This weekend I took this 5th gallon out to use in topping off my cyser
and it had begun to ferment in the plastic gallon jug at 33oF refrigerator
temperature. Boy is this good cider at this stage..."
It certainly is! My Dad likes it that way, after it starts to "work" a
little bit. And, I know another older gent who deliberately leaves a gallon
jug closed up in his car for several days in order to force it to this
stage before he'll drink it. Says it's the only way! Of course, he learned
the hard way about the benefit to piercing a hole in the lid first.
I agree. It's tart but not sour, fizzy but not soda, complex and alive! And
fleeting... one of the joys of Autumn in New England.
OK, enough poetic justice. Biologically speaking, what's going on? Is this
the same solution that develops for a period during our closed
fermentations on the way to good hard cider? What is at "work" and how can
the same beverage arise at both 33 deg F in the fridge and also at 75 deg F
in the car? Would it lead to hard cider or spoilage if left to continue in
situ? Does this stage of very drinkable, working, sweet cider have a name?
Thank you for your expertise!
Happy Holidays,
Dave Catherman
drcath@tiac.net
------------------------------
Subject: SCOTUS on interstate wine shipments
From: Kathy Hutchins <khutchins@direcway.com>
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 23:01:13 -0500
> The case began Tuesday
> (7 Dec 04) but a decision is not expected out until some time in the
> spring. I wish I had a case name or docket ID to track it, but I was
> not able to find one in today's online material.
The court consolidated three separate cases for the oral argument that
was heard 12-07-04:
03-1116: Granholm v. Michigan Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association;
03-1120: Michigan Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association v. Heald;
03-1274: Swedenburg v. Kelly
Looking at the statement granting cert,
(http://www.supremecourtus.gov/qp/03-01274qp.pdf ) I'm not sure New York
case (Swedenberg) has any question still left before the court.
Transcripts of oral arguments take a couple of weeks. I'd check back
after Christmas at this URL:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts.html
Now, if I could just sue the d@$& deer for eating all my apple
trees......
Kathy Hutchins
khutchins@direcway.com
------------------------------
Subject: Re: cider perception and taste
From: Dick Dunn <rcd@talisman.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2004 22:19:28 -0700
Jim Patton (patton@rockisland.com) wrote (much snippage):
> ...If I got the
> squints and grimaces I get from cider drinkers when I served someone
> a beer, I'd be headed back to the brewery to find the problem...
...
> ... I have learned when I'm going to
> serve cider at a meal to buy a bottle more than I think I need as some
> people will, after the first sip, start really consuming. Cider is a slow
> starter but definitely comes on in the end...
> ... So what makes
> cider different from wine? Even with similar acidities and sugars, people
> initially still react negatively to ciders. Why? Alcohol content,
> glycerol levels or whatever of a thousand other aroma, sensory and flavor
> producing compounds?
There's a quote I wish I could find...from Steve Wood (Farnum Hill cider)
about a year ago, roughly that sometimes we have to sit on their chests and
pour it down, but after the first taste they like it quite a bit. (Could
somebody dig up that quote? I can't believe it didn't make it into the
digest! I think it was even in a NYT article.)
Anyway, it's a known problem! even if--as Jim says--we don't quite know
why it is.
I still recall my first taste of a serious, dry, still West-Country cider
many years ago. It was startling, no question about it...and that, even
considering I'd had scores of unusual beers/meads/melomels/metheglins over
many years before that. Although I've joked that it took me several
hundred milliseconds to come around to liking that cider, in reality I
suppose I stood there for some fair part of a minute, not liking or
disliking but merely sorting out the tastes, trying to reconcile what
I'd just had with the simple concept of fermented apple juice.
In any case it was an epiphany. It wasn't a multi-stepped transition,
as one might move through beers or wines from the generic mass-market
to the high quality; it was Something Completely Different. But perhaps
if you've -not- had a lot of unusual tastes in your personal experience,
and/or the setting isn't right, and/or the hosts aren't prepared to explain,
you won't "get it"?
- --
Dick Dunn rcd@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA
------------------------------
Subject: Re: US Supreme Court case on interstate winery shipments
From: "Gary Awdey" <gawdey@att.net>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 04:29:45 -0500
Anyone who wants to follow closely the interstate winery shipment issue Dick
described in CD #1124 can find links to recent articles at Free the Grapes
(http://www.freethegrapes.org/).
Gary Awdey
Eden, NY
------------------------------
Subject: Supreme Court
From: Ken Schramm <schramk@mail.resa.net>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 09:34:11 -0500
The two initiators of the suit from Michigan are Ray and Eleanor Heald
(the Supremes tied together several, 13 I think, but one case from MI
and one from NY are the top billing). They are actually wine writers
(or should that be righters?) from my current hometown of Troy, MI.
Their case is Granholm v. Heald, and it is one of the named cases for
this combined case on the Supreme Court Docket. Since the case started
during John Engler's administration, you may also see it as Engler v.
Heald or as Jennifer Granholm, et al v. Eleanor Heald, et al. The New
York Case is Juanita Swedenberg v. Edward Kelly, NY's beverage control
division. There is also a case of the Michigan Distributors v. Eleanor
Heald.
The Healds wanted to be able to buy California wines direct, as so many
of the really top small production reds from CA can't come close to
affording distribution in Michigan. Swedenberg is a small NY winery
that would like to distribute outside NY. The Healds were successful at
the Circuit Court level, and Swedenberg was not, hence the differing
petitioner/respondent order.
I wish them the best of luck. Victory would be extremely beneficial to
small wineries, cideries and meaderies across the country. Gathering
from the questioning, it sounds like the justices were coming down on
the side of free commerce, but anything can happen, and guessing on a
Supreme Court decision based on the arguments in the courtroom has been
a perilous practice for pretty much the entire history of this country.
Ken Schramm
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Cider Digest #1184, 8 December 2004
From: Bill Rhyne <bill_rhyne@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:58:44 -0800 (PST)
RE: interstate trade and flavor analysis
For those of you who are interested in shipping
interstate, you will be the beneficiaries of efforts
(if they are successful) of the efforts of a group of
wine consumers and small wineries. If the rules loosen
up, then it will be legal to ship to your customers
wherever they are in the USA. When Rhyne Cyder got
mentioned in the New York Times, Saveur Magazine,and
Food & Wine Magazine, we got requests for our product
from all over the country. Unfortunately, it was
places like New York, Florida, Texas, and so
on--places where at the time, and in some cases still
is, it is illegal for us to ship there. While it was
nice to get some free press and recognition, it was
near impossible to translate it into sales due to the
interstate laws.
If you would like to keep up with the legal activities
here are two websites that might be interesting to
you. The Wine Institute has a page for shipping at
http://www.wineinstitute.org/shipwine. There is an
organization called the Coalition for Free Trade that
is involved with the legal effort also. They may be
part of the Free the Grapes group at
http://www.freethegrapes.org.
As for the cider flavor analysis, the basic components
are sour (acid), bitter (tannins), sweet (sugar) with
the other factors offering the unique qualities of the
apple, orchard, yeast, or cidermaker's techniques.
Food scientists have analyzed these components in
other foods and you can see their results in the foods
that we eat. For a while, I was getting a food
ingredients trade magazine and it was a little scary
to read. You can order any flavor you want for your
food, shampoo, skin creme, soda (Check out Jones
Soda's flavor "Turkey and Mashed potatoes")and so on.
You buy it by the ounce, pound, and so on. So if one
is really interested in analyzing flavor components,
look for a food science graduate student at the local
ag grad school and ask him if he would like to do his
masters thesis on cider flavor components or
something.
One last comment regarding cider aroma, I really like
the smell of apples sweating and juice fermenting.
While it is difficult to capture the aroma of apples
sweating, the aroma of juice fermenting was easy to
capture by fermenting in the bottle. I would joke with
people when they would compliment us on the pleasant
aroma that the aroma was the effect of "yeasts
breaking wind". The yeasts eat the apple sugar and
produce one part alcohol and one part CO2, "yeast
farts" to be a little vulgar. Yeasts are wonderful
little creatures, aren't they?!
That's all for now! Happy Holidays!
Bill Rhyne
- --- cider-request@talisman.com wrote:
------------------------------
Subject: Supreme Court cases re sale of wine from outside state
From: Bill Velek <billvelek@alltel.net>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 18:34:51 -0600
In Cider Digest #1184, Dick Dunn posted about a pending U.S. Supreme
Court case regarding importation of wine from other states, etc. He
said: "I wish I had a case name or docket ID to track it, but I was
not able to find one in today's online material."
Dick, from other sources I learned that there are three related cases by
the following case-styles:
Granholm v. Heald (03-1116)
Swedenburg v. Kelly (03-1274)
Michigan Beer & Wine Wholesalers Ass'n v. Heald (03-1120)
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/03-1116.html
Cheers.
Bill Velek
------------------------------
Subject: hotmail user caution
From: cider-request@talisman.com (Cider Digest Janitor)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 21:52:13 -0700 (MST)
If you receive your digest(s) via hotmail, beware that hotmail is once
again stumbling and bouncing e-mail for no apparent reason.
If you miss a digest, you can pick it up on the Web via the archive
location mentioned at the top of each digest. If the losses become a
problem, consider it a cost of your supposedly-"free" hotmail service.
And if you're considering switching to hotmail for free e-mail, please
reconsider!
- --the janitron
------------------------------
Subject: Virginia Cider?
From: "Richard & Susan Anderson" <baylonanderson@rockisland.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 22:00:55 -0800
We are going to be in Northern Virginia over Christmas week and would like
to try some of the local ciders and perhaps meet some of the commercial
producers, any ideas on where we should go, who we should meet?
On a second note, here is an article on the North American Cider
Competition. I would hope that it will encourage some of the more reticent
craft cider producers to participate in the future.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nwgardens/202874_goodtoeat09.html
------------------------------
End of Cider Digest #1185
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