Take a break from wine with this lower-alcohol, Pennsylvania-produced cider

Can you make wine with fruit other than grapes?

Winemakers almost always choose grapes because sugar is the raw material that can be converted into alcohol, and grape juice has the highest sugar content of any fruit juice. Apple juice, which is the next best contender, contains roughly half as much “potential alcohol,” reaching only 4% to 8% alcohol when naturally fermented without interventions. Known as “hard ciders” to distinguish them from the nonalcoholic unfiltered juices that can be marketed as “apple cider” in grocery stores, they fall far short of wine in their alcohol content.

Since they are more beer-like in strength and tend to taste best carbonated, hard ciders exist in a strange regulatory twilight zone where beer rules and wine rules collide and are among the few products that can be sold in Pennsylvania’s Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores that can also be found in beer stores.

Most states permit licensed brewers to produce hard ciders, which can be sold through the same channels as malt beverages as long as they do not exceed the 7% alcohol threshold set by federal authorities. Many small wineries and some craft distillers also produce ciders, but they tend to aim for alcoholic strengths over 7%, since that’s the level at which ciders may be sold through wine and spirits channels. That’s why this tasty sweet-tart farmhouse-style hard cider is stocked exclusively among the PA Preferred products in our local State Stores rather than in delis and bottle shops. It is produced by the folks who make Pittsburgh’s most acclaimed craft spirit: Wigle Whiskey. Whether you taste this tipple in the Steel City’s Spring Garden district or here in the City of Brotherly Love, you’ll appreciate its juicy flavors of Fuji apples and creamy Brie cheese, not to mention its cleansing rush of scrubbing bubbles.

$11.99, 8% alcohol

PLCB Item #26133

Sale price through May 1 – regularly $14.99