In the News

Several Woodinville cidery owners recently talked business with U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene when she visited Woodinville’s Locust Cider on Feb. 19.

Brothers Jason and Patrick Spears opened Locust Cider last March. Brian Callahan, owner of Woodinville’s Elemental Hard Cider, and Woodinville Mayor Bernie Talmas also came to meet with the congresswoman at Locust Cider.

One of the big topics of discussion was the CIDER Act, a bill DelBene cosponsored that Congress passed at the end of 2015 as part of the tax relief package. The CIDER Act, introduced by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (Oregon), increased the alcohol content allowed in hard cider from 7 percent to 8.5 percent, and allowed pear products, as well as apple products, to count as cider.

“Cideries were treated very differently,” DelBene said. “They’re kind of in between a winery and a brewery.”

Apples naturally vary in sugar content, and sugar gets converted to alcohol when making cider, so it’s difficult to control the alcohol content in hard cider, she said. Before the CIDER Act, cider was taxed at the wine rate ($1.07/gallon) if it had over 7 percent alcohol, or at the Champagne rate ($3.30/gallon) if it had over 7 percent alcohol and a high level of carbonation.

Now, cider with an alcohol content up to 8.5 percent can be taxed at the same rate as beer — $0.23/gallon for large distributors and $0.17/gallon for small producers.

The different between the beer tax rate and the wine tax rate is a “huge amount of money when you’re a small business,” DelBene said.

Jason Spears said the tax break will come in handy, since a couple weeks ago Locust Cider got a batch of sweeter-than-normal apples that produced cider with 8 percent alcohol. Under the old tax, they would have had to try to blend it with another juice to try to adjust the alcohol content — or else pay the higher tax.

“Officially, it’s wine, but on the market we compete with beer,” he said.

Spears and Callahan said cider is a growing market, and they’re out to prove to people that not all hard cider tastes like Angry Orchard, the very sweet ciders made by one of the largest producers in the U.S. Both Callahan’s Elemental Hard Cider and Spears’ Locust Cider make more refined ciders that appeal to beer drinkers as well as cider enthusiasts.

Many of Elemental’s ciders are infused with other fruits, while Locust Cider specifies which apples are used in theirs, such as gala, Granny Smith and Fuji. Although there are varieties of apples grown specifically for cider, Locust Cider uses mostly eating apples grown in Washington, because growers can’t plant cider apple trees quickly enough to meet the growing demand.

“It’s fun to take the eating apples and try to make something great out of them,” Spears said.

Locust Cider is distributed throughout Washington, Oregon and Idaho, and Spears hopes to add California and Arizona to that list soon.

Callahan, on the other hand, said his main focus for Elemental is retail. He hopes to open up several cider houses, besides their current cidery and tasting room in Woodinville, by the end of the year.