Photos by Sam Dean | The Roanoke Times

Diane and Chuck Flynt, owners of Foggy Ridge Cider in Carroll County, released their first batches of hard cider last year.

Video

• Making cider

Want to go?

• Try it yourself: Today, Foggy Ridge is hosting a Fall Harvest Festival from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The festival includes free cider and cheese tastings.
• Hours: Open most weekends May through October or by appointment
• Info: Call (276) 398-4041
• To order: The cider is also available by mail to residents of Virginia and North Carolina. For details or directions, go to www.foggyridge cider.com

Matt Dyar (left) and Wayne Marchall Jr. scoop ground-up apples into a press to make cider.

 

The Foggy Ridge Ciders

• Serious Cider: A crisp, light, dry cider made from traditional English cider apples. Serious Cider has been likened to champagne. It is great with light food or mixed with creme de cassis to make a wonderful cocktail.
• First Fruit: A lightly sweet, food-friendly cider that contains early-season heirloom apples. First Fruit is delicious with tangy, vinegar-based barbecue. Pork loin roasted in First Fruit and chicken stock with apples and onions is a real treat.
• Sweet Stayman: Made of a blend of Virginia Stayman apples and heirloom varieties to create a medium-sweet cider, the sweetest of the Foggy Ridge blends. Delicious with fiery Asian dishes, beef or venison chili.

DUGSPUR -- Ten years ago, Diane Flynt planted her first row of apple trees on the grassy swells of her Carroll County farm.

The variety was called "Mother."

That first, crooked row may have been nurtured by a novice, but Flynt now cares for 12 acres of apple trees, including more than 35 heirloom varieties.

Some of those trees lend their fruit -- which range from sugary sweet to inedibly sour -- to the complex flavors of Foggy Ridge hard cider.

"I view my art as this whole place," said Flynt, 53, a former banker who now wears rubber boots to work and prunes trees with a chain saw.

"Most of the year, you care for the trees. If all you like about it is picking the apples, you'd better get out of the business."

Flynt's venture ripened last year, when she produced her first batch of artisanal hard cider. Foggy Ridge is the only place in Virginia that focuses solely on hard cider.

"Hard cider" is a term used almost exclusively in America to refer to apple juice that has been fermented to create an alcoholic beverage. In other countries, "hard cider" is just "cider" and the rest is simply apple juice.

Most people who step into the tasting room at Flynt's cider house outside Dugspur have never tried hard cider before, and if they have, it came in a six-pack at the grocery store.

That kind of hard cider is to Foggy Ridge as wine coolers are to fine wine, Flynt likes to say.

None of her three styles -- Serious Cider, First Fruit and Sweet Stayman -- is exceptionally sweet or acidic. And their character, like that of wine, is subject to change each year depending on the weather and its effect on the apple crop.

"The big commercial places aim to have consistent flavor," Flynt said. "We aim to have a consistent style."

The drink of choice

When English settlers put down roots in America, New England's climate was hostile to barley, so making ale was out of the question.

Apples, on the other hand, flourished here.

Ben Watson, author of "Cider, Hard and Sweet," said apples were also versatile. They could be eaten out of hand, incorporated into recipes, made into apple butter or turned into cider vinegar.

Making hard cider was yet another way to preserve this bountiful crop. And because water generally tasted bad or was downright dangerous to drink in those days, naturally fermented hard cider became the thirst quencher of choice, Watson said.

It was such an important commodity that it was often traded for other goods or services.

"John Adams was said to drink a quart of cider every day with breakfast to generally promote good health," Watson said.

Even children were served a watered-down version called "water cider" or "ciderkin," which contained about 2 percent alcohol, he said. Standard hard cider contains 6 percent to 7 percent alcohol, about half that of wine.

Later, Prohibition, immigration to the Midwest and an influx of beer brewers from places such as Germany and Scandinavia conspired to force hard cider into the background, but it remained a favorite on farms in New England.

It was only in the past decade or so that cider has made a comeback here (though it thrives in England and other parts of Europe). And artisanal hard cider, which is made from blends of fresh apple juices rather than sugary apple juice concentrate, is still mainly produced in New England, the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes region.

When Watson plays host to "Cider Day," an annual meeting of hard cidermakers in Massachusetts next month, Flynt will be the only Southern cidermaker and the only female on the tasting panel.

"I'm going to be able to joke with them," she said, "about desegregating the event."

Choosing to go hard

Chuck and Diane Flynt had no idea what they wanted to produce when they purchased their farm.

They just knew it was a farm, so it should produce something.

"I'm not a beer drinker, so that's out," Diane said. "We never considered grapes because we are at about 3,000 feet and it is not ideal."

In addition, the Flynts were not interested in agriculture that would require extensive chemical spraying for bugs and diseases.

Fortunately, cider apples need not strive for the gleaming, ruby red ideal that lured Snow White to her deep slumber. They are only going to be ground up into pulp anyway.

Because fresh apple cider has to be pasteurized and only sells for about $3 a bottle, it made more economic sense to go hard. Foggy Ridge hard cider sells for $14 for 750 milliliters, the size of a standard Champagne bottle.

So while Chuck Flynt, 67, worked in his Burlington, N.C., textile business, Diane left her job with NationsBank to become a banking consultant, a more flexible job that gave her time to learn her new trade.

She apprenticed with cidermakers in England, where she discovered that good hard cider comes from a blend of different apple juices, including the juice from some apples you might never want to eat raw.

"English varieties are the high-tannin variety. They are called spitters because they make your mouth pucker," she said. "Tannin adds structure and body, which cider needs every bit of."

With her training, Flynt returned to Carroll County, where she grafted 250 new apple trees. Today, the farm has expanded from the original 60 acres to more than 200. The 12 acres of orchard are home to more than 1,000 trees.

Flynt's goal starting out was to produce about 80 percent of the juice she will need for her cider right on her property. She achieved that goal last year, but late frosts this year forced her to purchase apples from other Virginia orchards.

The tall, willowy redhead just shrugged.

"I'm a worrier when it comes to things I feel I can do something about," she said.

An award-winning start

The first production day of the year dawned clear and cool Sept. 13.

Friends had arrived to help grind apples, squeeze the juice from the pulp and pump the juice into tanks for fermentation.

It takes just four production days every fall to produce enough juice for 700 cases of cider.

While the apple grinder growled in the distance, Diane Flynt maneuvered through the orchards in her Cub Cadet utility vehicle, stirring up white butterflies along the way.

The apple varieties rolled off her tongue with ease: Kingston Black, Dabinett, Graniwinkle, Harrison and Roxbury Russet.

She said things like, "The Dabinett has that tea bag kind of astringency on your tongue because of the tannins" or "The Kingston Black is a famous apple that makes a single cider."

The first year has been good to the Flynts. The product has sold well and Sweet Stayman, one of the ciders, won a silver medal in the 2007 Virginia Governor's Cup wine competition.

"I think it is very, very promising and I'm looking forward to her development," said Charlotte Shelton, who owns Vintage Virginia Apples near Charlottesville.

Since a self-distribution law recently passed, Flynt has started to network with restaurateurs who may want to sell her cider in their establishments.

Right now, the cider can only be purchased on the farm or through its Web site because she refuses to sell through a distributor.

"The thing about getting a distributor is you can't get out of it," Flynt said. "It's worse than getting a divorce."

Clearly, Flynt likes to be in charge of her own future.

She knew she would buy a farm, she knew she would leave full-time banking and she knew she would make a living creating something unique.

Now, she knows that she has come a long way from just knowing "Mother."

"I enjoy growing things and I am passionate about trees," she said. "There is something spiritual about growing a tree. My trees will be around when I'm gone."