An interview with Beth & Mike Gillen, Cider Table!
During May, The Cider Exchange has reached out to members who you may know via social media outlets to be interviewed so you can get to know the people behind the persona. Our next interview is with Beth & Mike Gillen otherwise known as Cider Cider Table. Make sure you go check out their #CiderAngel project and gift some great cider to those who deserve it!
Ryan Gravell: We often only share our cider lives to the world. Tell us about your non-cider related life.
Beth & Mike Gillen: We have been married for 17 years and have two kids—Katie (15) and Luke (12). Most of our non-working hours are typically spent shuttling them to and from soccer practices or sitting in the stands watching them play (though that’s on hold now with social distancing). We have a garden that is usually sorely neglected and we’ve planted a little orchard in our backyard with apple, cherry, and peach trees. Nothing makes us happier than sitting on the back deck, eating and drinking as a family.
RG: How did you get into the cider world? Why are you passionate about it?
B&MG: Our first love together was wine, specifically wines from the Finger Lakes in New York. We’ve worked our way through all categories of beverages. We’ve had a Riesling phase, a big and bold red wine phase, various cocktail phases, and our home bar is always stocked with a huge range of spirits. Cider was a natural next step, and we fell in love with it because it offered such a wide range of new and different tasting experiences. We also have great friends who started getting into cider around the time we were discovering it. Sharing this journey with them has been a lot of fun. That’s what makes us so excited about cider: there’s truly a cider for anyone or any time. No other beverage covers as much ground as cider.
RG: Tell us about your Cider Table project.
B&MG: Food and drinks have always been part of our relationship and family, with some of our favorite memories and moments shared with others around a table. Our lives got so crazy a few years back with work and kids that we wanted to find a way to slow down and enjoy those moments more often. Cider Table was our way to take a step back and share some things we loved with others.
RG: What kind of ciders do you prefer? Do you have any particular favorite ciders that you can recall or what are some of your favorite cideries? Do you have a regular go-to cider?
B&MG: It really depends on the situation or what we’re eating. We’ll open a dry, tannic single varietal cider if we’re having steak for dinner or something semi-sweet if we order Korean. When sitting around the fire or if we have friends over who might not be cider drinkers, we’ll chill a six pack of a fruity modern cider. A few favorite ciders: Big Hill Ciderworks’ Dolgo Crabapple, Kite & String’s Pioneer Pippin, Ploughman’s Lummox, Threadbare’s Bouquet de Rose, Good Intent British Imposter. Favorite cideries: Big Hill, Ploughman, Eve’s, Eden, Threadbare, Blake’s, Black Diamond
RG: What are you drinking when you're not drinking cider?
B&MG: Whiskey (Mike), red wine (Beth), or whatever you are pouring, really. We love beverages of all types.
RG: Your family is always on the move it seems from your posts, what's your favorite cider adventure so far?
B&MG: Last year, we spent a long weekend in the Finger Lakes, a place we’d been more than a dozen times before. This trip was different because we were focused almost exclusively on cider (rather than wine) and had the opportunity to really get to know the ciders and—more importantly—the cidermakers. We had dinner around the family table with Autumn and Ezra at Eve’s. Ian from Black Diamond gave us an extensive—and very cold—tour of his entire orchard and cidery. We enjoyed lunch and a behind-the-scenes look at Finger Lakes Cider House with Garrett. And we laughed a lot while tasting the most offbeat ciders with the area’s most interesting cidermaker, John, at Blackduck.
RG: One of my favorite parts is seeing all of your food and cider pairings because I'm so bad at it myself and it's great inspiration. What's your favorite part of pairing and do you have any recommendations? Any recipes to share?
B&MG: Because we’ve been drinking and pairing wine for so long, and because we look at the beverage as part of the meal, pairing cider comes somewhat naturally. We’ll think about what we’re eating and how we want the cider to work with it: do we want something that will highlight a certain ingredient, tame something in the dish, or contrast an element to add complexity? You don’t have to be an expert by any stretch to do it. An easy pairing concept is spicy with sweet. Or a tannic cider with red meat. Most people have a passing understanding of wine/food pairing that can be extended once you get a feel for the flavor and sensory components of cider. That said, one pairing you can’t beat is ice cider and blue cheese. Heaven. And if you get it “wrong” (whatever that means), you’re still drinking cider so you’re winning.
RG: You're only a few hours away from me, down in Pittsburgh. What's the cider scene in Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh like and how have you seen them change and grow? What would you like to see more of?
B&MG: It’s small but growing. Arsenal has been here for years and can be found pretty much everywhere on tap. We appreciate what they’ve done for cider in the city. Threadbare is our favorite. The family who owns it is amazing and the cidermakers, Brian and Ben, are just awesome people. We’re also lucky to have A Few Bad Apples here. It’s a community cidermaking group that harvests forgotten fruit from backyards and parks to make cider and teach people about sustainability. We’ve had a lot of fun picking fruit with Mike Sturges and attending perhaps the world’s most fun cider event, A Few Bad Apples’ Ciderfest (held every fall). Mike wrote about A Few Bad Apples for Cider Culture here. More broadly, Pennsylvania’s cider scene is booming. In the eastern part of the state, Adams County is home to some of the best cideries in the country (in our humble opinion) and all across the Commonwealth you can find great cider being made with local apples (Pennsylvania being one of the countries largest apple growing states).
RG: Obviously, we're living in unprecedented times. What have the last few months been like for you and your family?
B&MG: We’ve had a lot of family time, obviously, and we’ve been forced to slow down. Those are both great things and lead to what we’ll remember most about this time: eating dinner almost every night together and cooking together with the kids. We also got our garden planted earlier than ever and should have time to keep on top of the weeds now that we aren’t running around to activities every evening.
RG: One of the things we've been so impressed with is how the cider community has really rallied around the industry during this time of uncertainty. Tell us about your #CiderAngel project that is part of it. How did it get started? What influenced it?
B&MG: At the beginning of this crisis, we were talking about how we wanted to buy cider to support all of the great people we’ve met in the industry, then we looked at our overstocked cider stash and realized we didn’t need any more for ourselves. Rather than add to our already full stash, we decided we’d buy cider from a few of our favorite makers, then porch drop bottles to people we know who are on the frontlines or who just need a pick-me-up. It was an easy way for us to support our friends both in the cider industry and in the trenches.
RG: Anything else you'd like to share that we didn't cover?
B&MG: Perhaps the best thing about being involved in the cider world, even just as overly enthusiastic enthusiasts like us, is how accessible it is. Not just the beverage, but the people. We were invited into the home of one of the world’s best cidermakers just because we reached out to say hello. Ben from Ploughman stopped by our house when he was in town to drop off cider, then proceeded to prune a few of our trees. Mike ate way too much cheese and drank way too much cider with Chuck from Albemarle after helping with the PA Farm Show cider judging. We’ve become friends with other cider enthusiasts and industry influencers like Kyle from The Cider Seeker and Mary from Cider Culture. The cider world is a big family without pretense and we’re happy to be a small part of it.