Sips from a cider spree

Farmers market in Ithaca. [Photo/Agencies]

Merwin, for instance, normally sells his fruit at farmers' markets and local restaurants and to fellow cider makers. But once a year, during Cider Week, he opens his Black Diamond Farm (named in honor of one of the state's last coal-powered locomotives, which ran on a nearby track that's now being converted to a rail trail; blackdiamondtrail.org) to the public for an orchard walk. Ours culminated with a delicious, messy six-apple pie and homemade cider－still and sparkling－poured from unlabeled bottles into plastic cups.

Because Merwin brews them primarily for himself (he has applied for a farm winery license, but the ciders are not yet being distributed), his ciders range from lightly boozy to a nearly wine-levelpotency. "I like to drink cider, and I like to drink a lot of it," he said. "That doesn't work very well if it's very alcoholic."

The previous night, I indulged in a generous sampling at the Cellar d'Or, a stylish specialized shop in downtown Ithaca, focusing exclusively on New York ciders and wines. There, Bill Barton, the owner of Bellwether Hard Cider, who has a popular tasting room outside town (one of the few that isn't a side course in a larger, pick-your-own, agritourism spectacle), explained the conundrum of fermentation. It "giveth alcohol," he said, "but taketh fruit"－meaning the flavor of the fruit. For his Cherry Street, which he calls his "heresy cider," he uses a technique shunned by many serious cider makers: He adds Montmorency cherries, post-fermentation.

Nearby, in a narrow, exposed-brick storefront, Autumn Stoscheck of Eve's Cidery poured some ice cider inspired by a visit to Quebec. It was sweet and strong and unlike anything I'd tasted－a concentrated bite of the 30 or so apples that Stoscheck said went into its 375-milliliter bottle.

Her Autumn's Gold, meanwhile, was a dry, sparkling cider that used French and English bittersweet apples and a Champagne method. Deva Maas and Eric Shatt, from the mom-and-pop Redbyrd Cidery, talked about gathering wild apples for their cider because they're acidic and hardy. "If there's a tree we've been going to for years, we'll propagate it," Maas said. "It's the 'old-world way.' "

Ithaca was a decadent couple of days in which cider seemed to appear in every possible form. We had a cider flight with dinner at the too-popular Just a Taste tapas restaurant, where our wait was over an hour. The next day, at Maxie's Supper Club and Oyster Bar, I ordered a Cider Sidecar of Maker's Mark, Cointreau, a Finger Lakes Distilling's Maplejack liqueur and an unspecified local cider before a spectacular three-course cider pairing dinner at Hazelnut Kitchen in Trumansburg.

Dishes of sausage and pork loin were followed by a dessert of apple cider doughnut holes, apple compote, candied walnuts and a mulled cider shooter with caramel ice cream. It was an exceptional－and, at $43, reasonably priced－meal that might alone have been worth the five-hour drive from the city.