Woodchuck Hard Cider Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary In Style

When Woodchuck Hard Cider first launched in Proctorsville, Vermont thirty years in the past, the beverage enterprise had a vastly totally different feel and look. This was earlier than the craft beer and spirits increase; few drinkers had ever even heard the abbreviation IPA, and it might be many years earlier than anybody may inform you what RTD stood for. And but via all of those adjustments, this curious northeastern model has managed to remain as related as ever.

Initially born out of a two-car storage, Woodchuck’s flagship Amber instantly outgrew the small house and manufacturing moved into neighboring Middlebury. Right now, you’ll discover their Cider Home and Faucet Room providing excursions and tastings 5 days every week. This can function homebase for Woodchuck’s thirtieth Anniversary marketing campaign, which kickstarts this week and culminates with the Ciderstock Music Competition in August of subsequent 12 months.

The corporate’s endurance owes a lot to innovation in packaging and taste. They’ve discovered success with a line of multi-flavored variations supplied in modern cans; constructed off of pure substances. However sustained gross sales have as a lot to do with what they’re not placing in these cans. Cider is of course gluten-free, which boosts its enchantment amongst health-conscious millennials. Actually, market research suggests that arduous cider gross sales are hovering amongst this specific demographic.

Woodchuck goes a step additional by particularly avoiding different infamous components similar to high-fructose corn syrup and processed sugars. In so doing, they’ve crafted a range pack of surprising ciders, starting from Cranberry Lime to Watermelon and Citrus, every with a calorie depend of 100 per can.

After all, you can even say that People have been hardwired to get pleasure from cider for hundreds of years. The primary apple bushes had been planed within the New World all the best way again in 1623 by William Blackstone. They had been cultivated extra for ingesting than consuming. And by the tip of the 18th Century, a sitting American President (John Adams) was proudly admitting to ingesting a tankard of the juice each morning to calm his abdomen.

All through the 1800s, as apples grew into one in every of Vermont’s most ample crops, the lion’s share of it was going into onerous cider and brandy manufacturing. And so when Woodchuck got here on the scene in 1991 they had been merely tapping into an American custom that had fallen by the wayside.

Thirty years later, they’re celebrating the milestone birthday with the introduction of latest branding on their top-selling canned ciders, together with Barrel Choose and Darkish & Dry 802. These choices will now be simpler to entry on-line, because the model unveils its new direct-to-consumer gross sales platform. No matter specialty one-offs you possibly can’t discover in your native market could be shipped to you instantly from the cider home in Middlebury.

And this neck of the woods is an particularly fascinating panorama to discover come autumn—to which thousands and thousands of annual leaf-peepers will attest. For those who’re making the trek, a go to to Woodchuck’s manufacturing barn is actually a worthwhile pitstop. As for everybody else, the model invitations you to take part within the “Artist Highlight Collection.” The just lately launched marketing campaign will spotlight a spread of native creatives each week all through autumn. You possibly can observe alongside on social media channels by monitoring #ChuckTurns30.

And now you possibly can even submit your individual work to be a part of a crowd-sourced competitors. Artistic endeavors celebrating Woodchuck’s thirtieth birthday, compiled all through autumn, are robotically entered to win a slew of prizes—together with limited-edition ciders and attire. The newest data is offered over at their Instagram account.