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Raging Cider & Mead celebrates nine years
Company wants to bring America back to its apple-tree roots
All dreamed up and created by Dave Carr, here in San Marcos. Cider’s not dead yet!
Dave Carr threw Raging Cider’s ninth anniversary party the other night. My friend Kim and I drove up to the cider bar in San Marcos because, as Kim said, “Dave’s a really, really good friend, and he has scrumpy, dude. Never turn down scrumpy.” Scrumpy is a rough sort of cider.
We got up there as the light was fading. You could see the lights, the bar in the dark industrial park, people at tables and chairs outside around a kind of stage, and someone with a guitar singing. There is a house in New Orleans/ they ca-ll the Rising Sun...
“We’re entering the house of Cider Sin, buddy!” Kim said as we got out. Pretty soon, we were joining a line at the bar and standing next to bottles of cider for sale, all produced right here at Raging Cider and Mead Company. The bottles bore names like “Wynola Scrump cider” and “Pomme Brulée.” Some offered wine-like details: “Farmers Blend, 8.8 percent, $16: Funky, light, sour and umami notes, bright apples, balancing tannins.” And up front, we spotted a draft pump. “Wayfarer’s Cider. For the adventurer. Share with a piranha.”
“All Dave’s,” Kim said, “and all local San Diego-grown fruit. He insists on that.”
We were shivering a bit in the cold night air. “Let’s get some mulled cider,” Kim said. “I want something hot.”
Great idea. It was a magical evening. Music, Perry (cider made from pears), and talk with, well, everybody — including Dave.“San Diego soil and weather are very conducive to pears,” said Dave. “We have a ton of wild apple and pear trees scattered around Julian and Palomar Mountain. They replanted themselves from earlier pear varieties that our forefathers left.” He said those wild pears are usually horrible to eat. “They’re small, and very, very tannic and acidic, but that makes them great pears for making Perry. I fell in love with Perry when I visited my family in England. Cider’s big in England. The bartenders there started pouring me scrumpies, and that memory always stuck with me. And then back here, 15 years ago, my wife Kerry had to go gluten-free. Apple and pear trees grew on our property in Valley Center, so we started making ciders for her. That’s how this all started.”
Conan Callahan belts out The House of the Rising Sun. He came last year too. Ciders freaks have a big loyalty thing going on.
He said he buys “ugly” from his farming neighbors, meaning spotty fruit that no supermarket would accept. “These apples and pears make cider that’s just as good, and this also gives our neighbors a secondary income stream.” But beyond being a good neighbor, he’s a man on a mission. “We want to re-introduce traditional cider to the American people. Cider used to be huge in the U.S.” How huge? Back in the early 1800s, the U.S. was the largest cider-producing nation in the world. Hard (fermented) cider was the workers’ go-to home brew — way ahead of beer. There was an affection for the ciders they made. They gave them descriptive names like “Merrylegs Perry.” During his campaign, eventual President William Harrison labeled himself “the log cabin and hard cider candidate.”
So how come, 150 years later, cider has collapsed? Dave said it started its long decline during the 1800s when people left country life for the cities, and started drinking beer. Cider was for “country bumpkins, not for the cool city hipsters of the 1890s.” And of course, all booze took a hit under Prohibition. But afterwards, only cider didn’t bounce back. It’s still down for the count. “Nowadays, most Americans have never even tasted cider,” said Dave. “It’s about time we reintroduced them to it.”
You might say Dave Carr’s out to make cider great again.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Raging Cider & Mead celebrates nine years
Company wants to bring America back to its apple-tree roots
Raging Cider & Mead celebrates nine years
Company wants to bring America back to its apple-tree roots
All dreamed up and created by Dave Carr, here in San Marcos. Cider’s not dead yet!
Dave Carr threw Raging Cider’s ninth anniversary party the other night. My friend Kim and I drove up to the cider bar in San Marcos because, as Kim said, “Dave’s a really, really good friend, and he has scrumpy, dude. Never turn down scrumpy.” Scrumpy is a rough sort of cider.
We got up there as the light was fading. You could see the lights, the bar in the dark industrial park, people at tables and chairs outside around a kind of stage, and someone with a guitar singing. There is a house in New Orleans/ they ca-ll the Rising Sun...
“We’re entering the house of Cider Sin, buddy!” Kim said as we got out. Pretty soon, we were joining a line at the bar and standing next to bottles of cider for sale, all produced right here at Raging Cider and Mead Company. The bottles bore names like “Wynola Scrump cider” and “Pomme Brulée.” Some offered wine-like details: “Farmers Blend, 8.8 percent, $16: Funky, light, sour and umami notes, bright apples, balancing tannins.” And up front, we spotted a draft pump. “Wayfarer’s Cider. For the adventurer. Share with a piranha.”
“All Dave’s,” Kim said, “and all local San Diego-grown fruit. He insists on that.”
We were shivering a bit in the cold night air. “Let’s get some mulled cider,” Kim said. “I want something hot.”
Great idea. It was a magical evening. Music, Perry (cider made from pears), and talk with, well, everybody — including Dave.“San Diego soil and weather are very conducive to pears,” said Dave. “We have a ton of wild apple and pear trees scattered around Julian and Palomar Mountain. They replanted themselves from earlier pear varieties that our forefathers left.” He said those wild pears are usually horrible to eat. “They’re small, and very, very tannic and acidic, but that makes them great pears for making Perry. I fell in love with Perry when I visited my family in England. Cider’s big in England. The bartenders there started pouring me scrumpies, and that memory always stuck with me. And then back here, 15 years ago, my wife Kerry had to go gluten-free. Apple and pear trees grew on our property in Valley Center, so we started making ciders for her. That’s how this all started.”
Conan Callahan belts out The House of the Rising Sun. He came last year too. Ciders freaks have a big loyalty thing going on.
He said he buys “ugly” from his farming neighbors, meaning spotty fruit that no supermarket would accept. “These apples and pears make cider that’s just as good, and this also gives our neighbors a secondary income stream.” But beyond being a good neighbor, he’s a man on a mission. “We want to re-introduce traditional cider to the American people. Cider used to be huge in the U.S.” How huge? Back in the early 1800s, the U.S. was the largest cider-producing nation in the world. Hard (fermented) cider was the workers’ go-to home brew — way ahead of beer. There was an affection for the ciders they made. They gave them descriptive names like “Merrylegs Perry.” During his campaign, eventual President William Harrison labeled himself “the log cabin and hard cider candidate.”
So how come, 150 years later, cider has collapsed? Dave said it started its long decline during the 1800s when people left country life for the cities, and started drinking beer. Cider was for “country bumpkins, not for the cool city hipsters of the 1890s.” And of course, all booze took a hit under Prohibition. But afterwards, only cider didn’t bounce back. It’s still down for the count. “Nowadays, most Americans have never even tasted cider,” said Dave. “It’s about time we reintroduced them to it.”
You might say Dave Carr’s out to make cider great again.
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