Cider, burgers, beer and coffee – all in one blog post!
Diane Flynt at Foggy Ridge Hard Cider in Dugspur. The Roanoke Times l File photo.
It sure has been an eventful week so far! And now I’m here to toss out a few other tidbits for your intellectual consumption:
* Diane Flynt, the owner of Foggy Ridge Hard Cider in Dugspur, will be at Tinnell’s Finer Foods in Roanoke next week to conduct a tasting of her beverages. She will also talk about the history of hard cider production and the interesting variety of heirloom apples she uses in her ciders.
Diane and her crew have earned many accolades over the past few years. Foggy Ridge cider has been featured in Food & Wine (twice), Imbibe, Esquire, Flavor, Gourmet, Garden & Gun, Saveur, Bon Appetit and several other national publications. In addition, Foggy Ridge was recently spotlighted on “Sunday Morning” on CBS. To see the full list of articles and awards, click here. To see an article I wrote about Foggy Ridge back in 2007, when they were still a fairly new company, click here.
Foggy Ridge Hard Cider is a real treat. My favorite is the Serious Cider, which is like apple champagne. All of the varieties are lovely and are worth a taste. If interested, head over to Tinnell’s Finer Foods at 2205 Crystal Spring Ave. SW on Friday, March 23 between 4 and 7 p.m.
* The 82-year-old Texas Tavern is featured in the April 2012 issue of Country Living magazine. It’s a nice little profile with a great portrait shot of owner Matt Bullington. Check it out on page 144 of that issue.
* Craft beer lovers, keep an eye on Senate bill 604, which has already passed the state House and Senate and now only needs to be signed into law by the governor. This bill would allow beer to be sold at breweries. Imagine that! Going to a brewery and being able to actually BUY a beer! You can track the history of that bill and find more details on the Legislative Information System website here.
* In case you happened to miss it, Amanda Codispoti reported on her blog, The Storefront, that CUPS Coffee and Tea is opening a second location on Brambleton Avenue. CUPS already has a shop in Grandin Village and will now be taking over the spot that used to house Dave’s Coffee Time and Mojo Cafe.
* Finally, do not forget to enter to win two tickets to the Celebrity Chef Tour at The Palisades Restaurant in Eggleston. There’s still plenty of time to enter! But please, do not leave your entry comment on THIS blog entry. Head over to the main contest post here. Thanks!
March 15, 2012 - 5:38 AM
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The brewery bill is a good one. Will that resolve the loophole of transporting craft beer to different locations run by the same company, such as Bull & Bones, which cannot sell their beer at the Pete Dye River Course, since a distributor is required for transporting beer off-premises (by law), and by law the same company cannot buy their beer back from the distributor? The only work-around for that is to hive the brewery operations into a separate LLC or something.
Speaking of cider and burgers…that made up a significant chunk of our first ‘summer’ cookout of the season…since yesterday topped out over 80. The only thing missing was some baseball on the radio.
That’s a good question because it’s always been a strange rule. I’ll see if I can clarify that point, OJ.
Cider and burgers sounds wonderful. That Foggy Ridge cider is so good with poultry and fish dishes, too.
I will definitely be there for the cider tasting…I LOVE hard cider. Does Tinnells sell her product? I would imagine if they don’t now, they will after that.
Yes, I’m sure you’ll be able to buy Foggy Ridge at Tinnell’s. They are pairing some cheeses and things with the cider at the tasting.
Sorry to change subjects, but I have heard absolutely nothing about Growler’s since their changes last month. Has anyone tried it yet?
I was reading in this month’s “Saveur” about Appalachian cider beans, a regional variation of the classic New England baked beans. I’m almost ashamed to admit, I’d never heard of them. But now, with this fine local product becoming available, I’ll be able to experiment to my heart’s content. And I might even end up making some of the beans with it, too.
Cheese AND cider? Heaven. Love Tinnells.
Foggy Ridge cider is fantastic. I encountered it at a wedding last summer, and our entire table at the reception highly enjoyed it.
On the note of beer, I ran across the regional Devil’s Backbone brand at Kroger last night. It’s bottled in Lexington, Va, just east of my hometown of Clifton Forge. I had one of the 8-Point IPAs (complete with a label depicting a deer with the appropriate number of antler points). I found it pretty crispy. My wife — who’s also an IPA aficionado — didn’t like the taste as much, but it had the kind of taste I want in an IPA.
Wait, the beer thing is confusing. Because, I have been buying beer at Devil’s Backbone and Blue Mountain, not to mention Bull and Bones and Growlers. Are these not breweries?
Is it only because they have a restaurant on-site that they are able to sell beer?
Or is this bill allowing the CASES of beer to be sold at the brewery?
I think the issue is that right now, people can’t sit down and order a whole beer and drink it at a place that is just a brewery. The brewery can conduct small tastings or sell beer to-go, but not actually sell a beer for consumption on premises.
I read that there was one amendment to the bill made in a House committee that stated the brewery can only sell THEIR beer, not brands they do not own.
Growler’s brews their beer at Towers mall, and they also have a brew pub, and you CAN order and drink whole beers there. I think the original owner of Awful Arthur’s/Towers had to sell the restaurant and brewery in order to be able to distribute his beer to his other restaurants. (Now THAT’S a crazy law!) Bull and Bones also has a brewpub, but not Roanoke Railhouse, they are “just” a brewery. Probably another license required to actually sell it retail and allow consumption on site. The original Devil’s Backbone Brewery, in Nelson County I think, has a brewpub. The newer D.B. brewery in Rockbridge near Lexington does not have a brew pub, it is a production facility only. I attended two “welcome to the valley” events sponsored by PA Short and Devil’s Backbone, and their beer is awesome! Esp. the 8 point IPA mentioned in comment 8 above. I haven’t seen it in bottles yet but will keep an eye out. Macado’s in Salem has the IPA and another D.B. brew on tap now!
Dennis, the DB site in Nelson County does have a restaurant attached. (It’s actually quite good too.)
You can drink any of the beers made there, and I believe they have a full bar as well. But I don’t remember seeing other beers available. So maybe they can’t do that? (but why would they want to?) You can also get their beer to go in Growlers to take home. I don’t know about cases of beer though.
I would like to see the red tape of the State>Distributor>Seller 3 tier system go away, because I feel it unnecessarily complicates things, but I doubt it will because of entrenched distribution corporations.
Either way, it seems as if This Fertile Beer Crescent from Norfolk, through Richmond up to C’ville down through Roanoke and into Asheville is really getting some attention with some astoundingly good beer.
Yes I just invented the term “Fertile Beer Crescent”
I like the Fertile Beer Crescent.
Scott, see my comment above about selling other beers. But I would think that only applies to breweries that do not have restaurants.
Scott, I did state that the DB brewery in Nelson County has a brewpub, it’s just the new one near Lexington that doesn’t. I like your new term! Many brewpubs I’ve been to sell only their own beer. At Growler’s, they have only their beer on tap but sell lots of other beers in bottles. It was the same when it was Awful Arthur’s.