Spirit of the Capital Region – Nine Pin Cider Works – Albany, NY

Emily: From Nine Pin Ciderworks tasting room in Albany, my name is Emily, and this is the Spirit of the Capital Region.

Josh: A lot of people don’t know this but New York State is actually the second biggest apple producer in the country next to Washington State. And we are the number one producer for apple varieties in the entire country, which is really important for cider makers because the more varieties of apples that we get to play around with and make cider with, the more complex our ciders can be.

Emily: It’s New York’s first farm cidery and it’s based right here in the Capital Region. Nine Pin Ciderworks uses exclusively New York grown apples and fruit, highlighting the extraordinary variety of our state’s agriculture while supporting local farms and orchards. Starting small right here in Albany, Nine Pin has extended its reach since the company’s launched in 2014. Their products can now be found in hundreds of bars, restaurants, and retailers throughout New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. They renovated and expanded this tasting room in October of 2016.

Josh: After an entire year of being overcapacity in our own tasting room when it was originally just a small room, we would pack the place out even if there was about 25 people in there competing shoulder to shoulder, wall to wall, so we quickly knew that we had to expand our tasting room to give us some more space to work with.

Emily: This tasting room offers a rotating selection of premium and limited small batch ciders as well as local New York beers, cocktails, and food.

Josh: We have 18 taps, about 11 of those taps are dedicated to our own ciders and 7 of those taps are dedicated to guest local farm breweries. We also have food in the tasting room, we have an expanded full-size pizza menu now, we do meat and cheese boards, we do snacks. Along with our mission of supporting New York agriculture, we love to support New York local businesses so we work with a lot of, again, local restaurants that do popups at the cidery. In the summertime, we do a lot of food truck events, they support us by carrying as the hard cider at their establishments and we want to give them the opportunity to showcase their products here in our tasting room. As far as the 26th challenge, that was started in 2016 as just a fun way to get people to come to the tasting room every 2 weeks.

Emily: Participants are challenged to taste 26 unique limited draft ciders released every 2 weeks over the course of a year of the tasting room.

Josh: In 2018, we started donating part of the proceeds to the Adirondack Mountain Club which is a local organization that helps protect the summits in the Adirondack high peaks.

Emily: Taste a variety of flavors ranging from their signature apple cider to ginger, to earl grey and beyond. Here, the cider varieties change along with the seasons.

Josh: But if you had to ask me honestly, what my favorite cider would be, I know this kind of a boring answer, but I’d say our signature cider which is the cider that you see out in tap in most restaurants, our green cans, that’s the cider that made me fall in love with Nine Pin and we always are working to improve it and make it better.

Emily: Enjoy the taste of New York with Nine Pin Cider but always remember to drink responsibly and get a safe ride home. My name is Emily. And this is the Spirit of the Capital Region brought to you by Martin, Harding & Mazzotti.