Wild State Cider Classic Dry

Wild State Cider, located on the shores of Lake Superior in Duluth Minnesota is where a team of summer campmates created the Wild State Cider Classic Dry.

Adam and Andrew are your typical outdoorsy type. The pair love to get out on their bikes and kayaks and go exploring, and maybe a spot of camping (hence the cans not bottles). This love of the outdoors makes them want to try and protect the outdoors. In fact, they are members of “1% For The Planet”, an organisation supporting various wilderness protection charities.

Now Minnesota does grow apples, the Macintosh does well there. Unfortunately, there isn’t the quantity or the infrastructure to support cider-making at this scale. It does support plenty of hobbyist cider makers though. So Wild State Cider source their apples from Washington State where the right combination of Fuji, Gala and Granny Smith apples are juiced, and tanker trucked across the country to Duluth.

The juices are fermented in cool temperatures with champagne yeast until dry. The Classic Dry Cider forms the base of the other cider from their range, which I’ll be looking at soon, so stay tuned for those reviews over the next few weeks.

The Nose

There is not a lot of action going on here but it gets straight to the point of being all about that oxidised apple juice. This oxidization helps develop that golden colour.

The Taste

This is labelled as Wild State’s Classic Dry Cider and that is bang on the money. It’s everything you would expect from a dry cider, that champagne yeast has ripped through the sugars. There are some apple flavours in there with not too many tannins. But they fade quickly into a minerally fizz with plenty of acid brightness. I’m guessing this is grown on either granite or high calcium soils.

For a dry cider, the finish is long and still very fruity.

Final thoughts on the Wild State Cider Classic Dry.

After a long day on the trail, sitting down around the campfire, I don’t want something too sweet; I think the minerality works well in outdoor settings. A few cans of this while scaring off the S’mores and roasting bears or whatever the done thing is, sounds like a pretty good weekend.

If this is the base cider for the rest of the range, I’m looking forward to trying a few more of them soon.

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