Farms, orchards and cideries across Franklin, Hampshire and Berkshire counties, the North Quabbin region and southern Vermont will be open for tastings, demonstrations and more as part of the 31st annual CiderDays this weekend.
“There’s a lot of events happening and a lot of it’s happening at the farms and breweries,” said Ben Clark of Clarkdale Fruit Farms in Deerfield. “There is so much to do. … It’s a good all-around, something-for-everyone weekend.”
While the majority of events are free, some require advance registration and tickets, such as the guided cider tastings at The Mill at Shelburne Falls on Saturday evening, and the Cider Salon, which is returning after a five-year hiatus. The Cider Salon, allowing attendees to sample the products of 20 regional cideries, will be held at the Scott Farm Orchard in Dummerston, Vermont, marking the northernmost point of CiderDays activities.
At Clarkdale Fruit Farms, visitors can purchase various fruits and cider, including special russet and vintage cider blends, as well as enjoy a cider pressing demonstration from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Nov. 1. Clarkdale will also host an orchard history talk at noon on Saturday and two cider cooking classes on Sunday, Nov. 2, one at 10 a.m. with award-winning chef Sandy D’Amato and one at 11 a.m. with Lucy Damkoehler, owner and chef at Sweet Lucy’s Bakeshop in Bernardston.
“Here at the farm, we don’t do hard cider, but we have sweet cider, and for CiderDays, we make a few special ciders,” Clark noted. “It has a lot of tannins and is really tangy. It’s great for drinking and for making hard cider at home.”
CiderDays is always held the first weekend of November, with some festivities starting on Friday, Oct. 31. Clark said it’s a time after peak harvest when orchards are typically less busy with visitors looking to pick their own fruits, but still have plenty of apples in stock and aren’t yet busy handling Thanksgiving orders.
Clark said thousands of gallons of cider are sold over the weekend, and CiderDays is one of Clarkdale’s biggest weekends for revenue. Across the various events throughout the weekend, CiderDays sees approximately 1,000 visitors, locally and from around the globe.
“It’s just after Halloween and before Thanksgiving, so for the orchards, it’s a slower time. We’ve just gotten through the peak of harvest,” Clark said. “It’s grown over the years and we see people from Boston, New York and even overseas.”
Nicole Blum, co-owner of Carr’s Ciderhouse in Hadley, said the weekend is so popular because while CiderDays has only been in existence for 31 years, New Englanders have been enjoying cider in the fall for centuries.
“CiderDays happens to take place during a beautiful time of year, and people want to do the quintessential fall thing,” Blum said. “Cider is pretty wonderful and New England is a region pretty well-known for it.”
CiderDays was born 31 years ago as, of course, a celebration of cider. Clark, whose father Tom has been involved in the festivities since the annual event’s inception, said the idea came from the Maloney family of West County Cider.
“They were the first in the state to reboot the cider movement,” Clark said. “The Maloneys were at the forefront of the movement.”
By collaborating with Paul Correnty, author of “The Art of Cidermaking,” as well as with photographer Charlie Olchowski and other local cidermakers, CiderDays was born.
At Carr’s, visitors can enjoy sweet and hard cider, as well as roasted chestnuts. Some cider flavors were created specially for the weekend: a crab apple cider, a pear cider and a wild apple cider made with apples foraged by CiderDays organizer Matt Kaminsky.
Blum said Kaminsky, also known as Gnarly Pippins, will be hosting the sixth annual Wild and Seedling Pomological Exhibition at the Williamsburg Grange Hall on Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Attendees can see and taste a showcase of seedling apples and pears from across the continent and vote for their favorites.
On his blog, GnarlyPippins.com, Kaminsky wrote that the Wild and Seedling Pomological Exhibition has grown in popularity over the past few years, and the apples presented have grown in deliciousness. He’s excited to see what apples this year’s event will bring.
“In the past two years, the bar has been raised so many times. The apples submitted are more incredible than ever before, the attendance and public interest in the event has been greater than ever before, and I, along with my collaborators, are so grateful to have the momentum behind it to be able to keep this going,” Kaminsky wrote.
Some of the local CiderDays activities include a talk on tending to backyard orchards at New Salem Preserves at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday; a free apple cooking and cider crafting class at 1 p.m. Saturday at Cameron’s Winery in Northfield; and a cider tasting pop-up market featuring cidermakers from across the county from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday at Headwater Cider in Hawley. For a full schedule of events and participating organizations, visit ciderdays.org.
