Aaron Burr Cidery

Introducing Aaron Burr Cidery

Aaron Burr began, and has always existed, for one reason: Andy and Polly believe that cider is, in itself, a window into American History. This gets played up a lot in the cider world. Fanciful stories about Johnny Appleseed and Benjamin Franklin are often used and over-used in cider marketing. But these are not the stories that Andy and Polly are interested in telling. The ciders of Aaron Burr Cidery are windows into a world before industrial farming, before the genetic tempering of our fruit supply, before the killing of our orchards, farms, and vineyards with abrasive chemicals. To this end, Aaron and Polly have dedicated themselves to researching the oldest known American texts explaining the original cider-making process in America, and hunting out and cataloging long-lost, wild, uncultivated apple varietals that would have existed in those times.

Aaron Burr Cider began as a home farmstead, and is still that today. Anything that can’t be done by hand by Andy and Polly themselves simply isn’t done. And it’s this reason why production is, and always will be, capped at 30 Barrels a year. This is the reason why they will never expand beyond the five acres they currently maintain. Because to grow any more, to increase their production beyond what they can accomplish on their own, would simply be inauthentic.

The ciders at Aaron Burr are split into three categories: The centerpiece is their Homestead Locational Ciders, small-production runs made from wild, uncultivated, foraged apples that are fermented and categorized by where the apples were foraged. Locations that anyone who has spent time in the catskills would be familiar with, such as Shawangunk Ridge, Mamakating Hollow, and Neversink Highlands. These wild apples are either Pippins (apple trees that sprouted naturally from a discarded seed) or 150+ year old abandoned homestead trees, trees that were originally planted by the old homesteaders of New York State to make cider for their home consumption, to blend with their well water and kill any unwanted bacteria, and to drink with breakfast to start a day off right.

There are also a smaller line of Varietal ciders, made from cider apples (not domesticated modern eating apples) such as the Malus Baccata, the holy grail of the crab apple, that are fermented as a varietal exploration.

The most easily accessible and largest production are the wine-ciders, the Appinette (A blend of unsprayed apples and Traminette grapes) and the Elderberry-Apple. These are crowd pleasing, delicious, fruit-forward expressions with historic roots in the textbooks that line Andy and Polly’s farmstead kitchen.

All ciders are hand foraged and hand picked in small baskets.

They are then placed in a large bin to macerate for up to a month.

The apples are then pressed to open top bins. The juice is left to begin fermentation with native yeast population.

The cider is then bottled at various level of brix (per Andy’s choice and also determined on vintage and site).

All the ciders are bottle conditioned. No fining, filtering or adjustments.