Episode 227: Cider Week Takeover!

It’s Cider Issues on Cooking Issues! Dave Arnold is joined by two bad-ass cider makers, Leif Sundström of Sundström Cider & John Reynolds of Blackduck Cidery. Together, they talk about some cider history and solve some listener questions related to apples, keeving and cider making.

The Cider Makers

Sundström Cider is a new cidery based in the Hudson Valley of NY.  Leif Sundström began Sundström Cider after 10 years of working in the wine industry.  Beginning in Portland, OR Leif worked as opening beverage director for Le Pigeon restaurant before transitioning to more intimate aspects of the wine industry, first as harvest assistant and cellar hand at Boedecker Cellars and later moving to NYC to work as Portfolio Manager of Terry Theise Estate Selections at Skurnik Wines.  After leaving Skurnik, Leif spent a harvest season at Weingut Leitz in Rüdesheim, Germany before moving to the Hudson Valley to pursue the challenge of maximizing the potential of cider.  Sundström Cider focuses on select wild harvest apples, older heirloom and cider apple varieties, as well as several species of crab apples in an effort to make vinous, age-able ciders that seek to speak of the place they come from.  

John Reynolds co-owns Blackduck Cidery with his wife Shannon and their two out of control red headed daughters, Pippin and Idunn. He’s spent most of his adult life involved with fruit and hard work, although not necessarily at the same time. The orchard was planted fifteen years ago and culminated in our first vintage in 2013. In his spare time, The Lawrence Welk Show and the intricacies of Dr. Seuss’s word play consumes many long mindless hours.