MNN - Mother Nature Network

My husband and I did stockings for each other this year, and I had a lot of fun picking out items for his. I  was wandering through our local store in search of little goodies to add to his pile when I came across a hard cider by the company, Crispin. My husband and I don't drink a lot of alcohol but we enjoy it when we do. We've had some pretty good hard ciders before, but I noticed that this one was naturally fermented and had honey as an ingredient. It sounded interesting.

 

(By the way, I consider myself a traditional foodie, that is someone who tries to eat a diet based on traditional ingredients, and naturally fermented and organic wines and hard ciders can be a part of a well balanced diet in moderation.)

 

Anyways, my husband was thrilled with the contents of his stocking and shared the cider with me. We were both blown away by how much more flavorful this hard cider was in comparison to any other we've tried (we've tried both cheap brands and more nice, expensive ones). This one was, hands down, the best we've tried. It makes every other hard apple cider we've tried seem one-dimensional, whereas this brand had a lot more complexity. 

 

I took a closer look at the bottle and found the company's website. We tried their honey crisp hard cider. There are a few things they do, besides the naturally fermented process, which may help make this drink so delicious.

As a side note, I also appreciate that this hard cider is gluten-free!

 

I don't know if I can buy it locally or not, but I noticed that they have several other flavors of naturally fermented hard cider, including one sweetened with maple syrup and Belgian Trappist beer yeasts, another fermented with Irish stout ale yeast, and one more fermented with sake yeast and rice syrup. They all sound amazing.

 

This will definitely be on our favorite list.