A Cidery Built For Two

Sept. 30, 2016

Orchard flavor. Rich blends. Artisanal beverages. These are just some of the buzzwords surrounding Dan Young and Nikki Rothwell’s Tandem Ciders, the award-winning Suttons Bay cidery inspired by the couple’s tandem bicycle tour of England.

DARINGLY DIFFERENT

Set in the heart of Leelanau wine country, Tandem Ciders stands out not only because it’s one of only a few dedicated cideries in the region but also because its range of ciders — from tart to sweet to sour and many in between — is so broad.

VENTURING NORTH

So what brought this robust cider house here? “The main reason we moved to Michigan was that Nikki grew up here. She was born and raised in Kingsley,” Young said. Rothwell had been at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and met Young while he was co-owner of a local brewpub, where he’d spent 12 years utilizing his food-science background.

The pair couple took a trip to England in 2003, and that’s where the cider seed was sown. They soon found different varieties of cider at nearly every pub they stopped at, each with their own unique flavor profiles and subtle differences. “We spent 30 days riding our tandem bicycle through the heart of the English cider industry in the south and really started to enjoy cider during that trip,” Young said. “All the pubs had multiple taps of ciders!”

PUB APPROACH

The pair married in 2004, with Rothwell nudging Young, a native New Englander, into the move to Michigan after she had applied for a job at Michigan State University’s Horticultural Research Station in Leelanau County. But they also wanted a project they could call their own as a couple, one that would serve as an anchor for themselves and their neighbors.

“After moving here, I attended a meeting of MSU’s Michigan Hard Cider Initiative, which was created to generate interest in hard cider as a way to utilize Michigan’s significant apple crops,” Young said. “Cider also appealed to us because it was just so local — there are so many apples here in Northern Michigan.”

They modeled Tandem’s tiny tasting room after some of the small, well-worn country pubs they’d visited in England, keeping the main area cozy and the outdoors just as welcoming as the inside. “There are picnic tables and horseshoe pits outside,” Young said. “We have a decidedly pub-like feel and have created a nice balance of locals and visitors.”

LOCAL LOVE

Focusing on local apples for their beverages, Tandem manages its own small orchard with twelve different cider-specific apple varieties, and the couple buys additional varieties from other local growers.

“We purchase the vast majority of our apples from local growers like the Steimel Brothers, Eagle View Farms, Versnyder Fruit, and Christmas Cove in Leelanau County,” Young said. “Also Wunsch Farms and Schultz Orchards on Old Mission Peninsula. And we really value the close relationships we have formed over the years with these growers; we wouldn’t be able to do what we do without them.” What they do is transform nearly 500,000 pounds of apples per year into cider, in a process that’s as fascinating and specific as the cider is flavorful.

POMACEOUS PROCESS

Fresh, ripe apples are washed and then crushed to form a pomace, the solid parts of the apple crushed together. The pomace is then pumped into cloths that are stacked between plastic racks; this stack of apple “cheeses” are then squeezed in a hydraulic press, and the juice is collected. “This juice is typically what one drinks in the fall with donuts,” Young explained.

Yeast is added to the juice, which is then allowed to ferment. “During the fermenting process, the yeasts consume the apple’s sugar to create alcohol and carbon dioxide,” Young said. “Sometimes we let the yeast eat all the sugar, and we end up with a dry cider. Other times we stop the ferment with a centrifuge that essentially whips all the yeast out, and we’re left with a naturally sweet cider.” After the ferment, the ciders are carbonated, filtered, and packaged, ready to be consumed.

APPLE ATTRIBUTES

Different apples have different flavor profiles, which influence the resulting ciders, offering just as many different characteristics as a wine or a microbrew. It takes skill to determine which apples will create the type of cider that is desired, and that’s the couple’s specialty.

“In Europe, it’s very common to grow apples specifically for cider,” Young said. “These apples are often much more bitter, astringent, tart, and even sweeter than many of our common dessert apples, and those flavors definitely affect the flavors of those ciders. We take great pride in the fact that we never add sugar or sweeteners to our cider.” Tandem’s Green Man cider, for instance, is made primarily from Rhode Island Greening apples, a green-skinned apple whose tart taste carries over into the finished cider.

SWEET REWARDS

Tandem Ciders offers a couple of standout sodas, too, for those preferring something non-alcoholic — its ginger ale and sparkling apple both offer tangy refreshment equal to that of their cider counterparts. Adding in the sodas is another way Young and Rothwell are evolving their cidery, and their efforts are paying off. Many of their beverages have acquired their own fan club, nabbing writeups in a long list of publications and positive recommendations flying as fast as apple tree leaves in October.

As for the ciders of which the owners themselves are fans? “Nikki perfers the drier ciders. She would probably choose the Crabster or The Dry Guy,” Young said. “And I’ve been loving our Smackintosh in the can lately; it’s made with mostly Macintosh apples, fermented specifically to preserve that fresh fruit flavor that reminds so many of us of fall.”

Tandem Ciders is located at 2055 N. Setterbo Rd. in Suttons Bay. It’s open seven days a week: Mon.-Fri. 12-6, Sun. 12-5 (days/hours will change over the winter, so call ahead). 231-271-0050, tandemciders.com.