The newly organized, 12-member Minnesota Cider Guild’s objective is to advance, promote and showcase Minnesota-made cider. There are 16 cider producers in Minnesota and several cideries in planning.
The first order of business for the guild is to organize the 2017 Minnesota Cider Week, June 5 – 10, a week-long celebration of cider with multiple events at many different venues throughout the Twin Cities.
“The Minnesota cider industry is very young, with the majority of cider makers launching their businesses within the last four years,” says Gretchen Perbix, guild president. “We have tremendous support among our local consumer audiences, so by bringing together our collective ideas and talents, we will be able to continue to build interest, momentum, and consumption of our local ciders.”
Minnesota Cider Week will include cider pairing dinners at participating restaurants, cider trivia at participating entertainment venues, opportunities for home brewers to enter their ciders in competitions to earn bragging rights and fun prizes.
The festivities will conclude on Saturday June 10 with the Minnesota Craft Cider Festival, a cider-tasting with up to 50 different ciders from around the world, to be held at Red River Kitchen at City House in St. Paul. City House is an historic Elevator and Sackhouse, renovated into a public pavilion located on the scenic Mississippi river in downtown St. Paul.
The celebration was originally established as “Minneapolis Cider Week,” the brainchild of Town Hall Tap in Minneapolis, back in 2010, before the cider craze began.
“Town Hall Tap saw the future of cider, long before even we cider makers did,” says Perbix. “Now they have handed over the reins to the Minnesota Cider Guild to take it to the next level, and we are really appreciative for all of their support.”