Food & Core strategy If anyone can make the hard sell for hard , it’s former Goose Island brewmaster Greg Hall. By Julia Kramer Photographs by Martha Williams

irst things first: You might want to take off your shoes. Pressing cider by hand F involves no small amount of exertion, and things are going to get a little messy. Especially when you’re in a room the size of a generous walk- in closet, and there is nowhere for discarded bits of and splatters of to land except on the floor or the walls or, apparently, your feet. The room is painted the kind of in-your-face bright orange usually reserved for insane people’s art studios, and in it stands a barefoot Greg Hall, the former brewmaster of Goose Island. He’s tossing bushels of Cox orange pippin through a six-foot-long wooden press, cranking 180 degrees at a time until he’s red in the face, then collecting the and fermenting them with yeast in carboys (small- necked plastic vessels) labeled with strips of tape. This is home base for Hall’s new company, Virtue Brands, and this is the testing ground for its first in a line of hard : . Now it’s time for a test. “Okay,” Hall says to me, “what do you think the ingredient list should be on a bottle of cider?” Hall, seated at a wooden farmhouse–style table at Virtue headquarters in Roscoe Village, picks up a bottle of Crispin (a popular U.S.-produced brand of cider that bills itself as “ultra-premium”) and begins reading from the ingredient list: “hard cider, apple juice APPLES OF HIS EYE concentrate, natural flavors, malic acid, sulfites.” Hall samples potential cider apples at Nichols Hall notes the one ingredient that’s not listed— Farm & Orchard that’s rarely listed—in mass-produced ciders: in Marengo. apples. “Brewers—even the biggest brewers in

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the world—are still using water, malt, hops and yeast,” he says. “Even the biggest wineries are using . The biggest cider makers are using apple-juice concentrate and sugar. Nobody would do that in brewing or wine making.” From branch to bottle Surveying the widely available ciders, Hall RedStreak will be made from a blend of apples from different sees a landscape not unlike that of craft beer two local growers. Hall is in the decades ago. “I remember in, like, 1988, ’89, people apple-testing phase, and he’s would come into Goose Island and say, ‘Hey, do considering these f ve cider- you have any domestic beers?’ And we’re like, friendly varietals grown by ‘This is Chicago, America, it’s all domestic. It’s Nichols Farm. made right here.’ [They’d say:] ‘No, you only make imports.’ It’s like: You don’t even know what that means. People just didn’t know what “You couldn’t sell this apple if you beer was supposed to taste like. And it’s exactly tried,” says Todd like that with cider today.” Nichols, one of Hall’s father, John, founded Goose Island the farmers. Like Brewery in 1988, expanding to a Fulton Street many cider apples, brewing facility in 1995. By that time, Greg had it’s too bitter to eat ascended from a brewer to brewmaster, and he raw. Or as Nichols puts it, “It’s fricking spent much of the next decade-and-a-half disgusting.” developing Goose’s “reserve” line, pioneering Fortunately, in barrel-aging with Bourbon County Stout and hard cider, that nailing Belgian styles with Matilda and Sofie. In bitter f avor March, Anheuser-Busch InBev bought Goose prof le provides astringency. Island for $38.8 million, and Hall stepped down as brewmaster. In July, he announced his new venture, Virtue. “The timing’s just so right,” Hall says of “These oxidize launching Virtue. “It’s been something that’s been really quickly,” on my back burner for ten years, that I’ve wanted says Hall of the to do and just haven’t done, because I’ve been too small, green-yellow busy at Goose.” Hall had his cider epiphany in 2000 apples, “so you get more color in the at a pub called the Maltings in York, England, cider that way.” where he traveled with fellow brewers from Goose Island. The Maltings was wrapping up a cider festival and had dozens on tap. “I had never had Cox orange cider like that before,” Hall recalls. “None of us pippins had.… We were just blown away by the amount of “These were in my flavor and character and complexity.” kids’ lunch box today,” says Hall But cider is more than a personal passion: It’s of this red-orange an endeavor Hall sees as “virtuous,” hence the English apple, company’s name, which was inspired by the which is well-suited principles of the Slow Food Chicago organization, for both eating and where he was a board member. “If I can source fermenting into many apples [100,000 pounds this year, 1 million hard cider. soon] and plant more trees, that’s a good thing,” Hall says. “And if I can support farmers and pay a Harry Masters premium for specific apples, there may be more Small with a rich families who can stay in farming.” red color, these bittersweet apples Obviously, it’s also a business venture. Hall are good for cider believes there is an untapped market for cider in because of their Chicago. That opportunity exists not because notable tannins, there isn’t good cider out there (there’s lots of it), which (as in wine) but because the good stuff is hard to find. Quality give a fuller f avor ciders are produced on such small scales they’re to the f nal product. near-impossible to get in any significant quantity outside of the region where they’re made. Take Etienne Dupont, one of the world’s best-known “It’s an American cider makers, which is based in the Normandy variety that doesn’t region of France: “He’s got, like, 200 acres, and have the tannins that the English that’s all he’s got, and he doesn’t buy anyone variety has but else’s fruit, so he’s just never gonna make more does have a cider,” Hall says. “I think Publican probably has, decent amount like, five kegs a year they put on, and they just of tannins,” says can’t get any more.” Even a relatively local brand, Hall of this popular Michigan-based Tandem Ciders, is hard to find baking apple. outside of Traverse City.

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The limited accessibility of good cider—and venison tenderloin with hay-roasted parsnips) the poor quality of ciders that are readily were paired with a different cider from the French available—presents both a challenge and an producer Dupont, at whose estate Hall spent a few opportunity for Hall. On the one hand, there’s weeks in October. Is cider ever going to be as big going to be a learning curve. “Most people have as craft beer? “No,” Hall replies. “No chance. But, I not had a traditional English or French or Spanish mean, right now, [the cider market] is just so, so FRUITS OF HIS LABOR hard cider,” Hall says, “and they don’t know what tiny” that there’s plenty of room for growth. Just Cider-friendly apples such as these at to expect.” And just as damaging, the public as soon as Hall can find the fruit. Nichols Farm & Orchard might assume that since any cider they’ve tried “The varieties he wants, no one grows,” says could take up to six years to produce. has been sweet, strong and tasted pretty much Nick Nichols, a farmer in Marengo, Illinois, alike, that’s simply the nature of the beverage. “I “because they taste horrible.” Nichols is leading the don’t think people are just going to wake up and Virtue Cider team (Hall; his business partner, crafted, visiting cider makers in Europe and say, ‘Hey, I’ll go down to the store and see if there’s Stephen Schmakel; his assistant, Emilia Juocys; enrolling in cider-making workshops. For the first any good cider there,’ ” Hall says. and two members of his design firm, Grip) through year, Hall will press and ferment RedStreak at St. On the other hand, Hall—who has spent the his muddy Nichols Farm apple orchards on a cool Julian winery in Paw Paw, Michigan; the cider last 20 years trying to elevate the status of a September morning. These trees will bear some of will be on draft only, mostly in Chicago and similarly misunderstood beverage—is uniquely the fruit for RedStreak, whose name comes from Michigan, beginning in February or March. Soon suited to remake cider’s image. At Goose, Hall the first apple grown in England specifically for after, Hall hopes to begin construction on his own wanted to get the public thinking about beer the cider—in 1632. “The hard thing with apples is it facility in Michigan, where he recently bought a same way it did wine. So he takes six years to get much of a house and where he plans to source most of his created clean, understated People didn’t crop on them,” Nichols adds. apples, to be operational in time for apple- labels that looked as though “know what beer Given the commitment it takes pressing next fall. they belonged on the dinner was supposed to on the farmers’ part, Hall is Back at Virtue HQ, Hall is attempting to table; he developed a “Brewed testing out a number of apple measure the acidity of the juice of the just-pressed for food” ad campaign that taste like. And it’s varieties to determine which Cox orange pippins when Juocys ducks in. She showed Goose bottles paired exactly like that ones he might ask Nichols, or hands him a stack of square promotional cards with restaurant dishes; and he with cider today. another farm, to grow for him. In that Virtue would later distribute at the Apple oversaw beer-pairing dinners the meantime, he’s scouting Cider Century bicycle tour in Three Oaks, at restaurants around the city ” growers in Michigan (the second- Michigan. One side of the card is printed with a that physically put Goose Island beers in front of largest apple-growing state after Washington) and Victorian-like painting of apples still on the diners. Illinois for apples that have high levels of tannins branch and the words “your next drink.” Hall Hall has similar plans for cider, and he’s not similar to the antique English and French varieties. turns it over and starts reading his quote on the waiting until early 2012, when RedStreak hits the “That acidity stays in there,” Hall explains, “and back. It begins, “RedStreak cider is a true English- market, to implement them. For the past three the tannins add structure.” Overnight, Hall has style draft cider. With a hazy vermilion hue, the years, Hall has traveled to New York to teach become one of Nichols’s biggest buyers: He just scent of ripe apples and a touch of oak, RedStreak beer-and-cheese classes at the iconic Murray’s bought 20,000 pounds of apples for some of has a crisp, tart finish….” Hall pauses after Cheese Shop. Now those classes include lessons RedStreak’s earliest batches. vermilion, picking up one of the tumblers of juice on cider, too. Last week, Hall coordinated a cider In addition to procuring the fruit, Hall has spent and studying its color for a moment. He puts it dinner at C-House, in which four courses (e.g., much of the last few months studying how cider’s down and smiles. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

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