As many of you know, Mom and I went on our annual October trip and some of you may have known that we were planning to visit many cider mills in this area. We started out yesterday morning (Friday Oct. 12, 2007), with our good friends Bruce and Catherine Youngs, and explored the mills Northeast from here (Rochester, Rochester Hills and Romeo). We were able to visit a total of eight mills (and one that is normally closed on Friday but had workers there pressing cider for the weekend, but did not have any available to purchase) and were able to purchase cider from all eight (although one was only a cup of hot cider so we couldn't compare it to the cold cider from the other mills). It is remarkable how much different cider tastes depending on how is was made. The very last mill we visited on Friday had the best cider of the day but one other was rated three stars by Mom and me (we didn't enlist the Youngs in voting on the cider yesterday but did it today as we drove around). We rated one star as bad, two as decent and three as real good. Only two rated three stars yesterday, Verellen Orchards (the best one) and Rochester Cider Mill. Three rated two stars and two rated one star (with the final one being the hot cider that didn't really compare to the others because it was spiced up so much -- but the warmth of the hot cider was very welcome at that point of the day).
Today (Saturday Oct. 13, 2007) we concentrated on cider mills that are Northwest of South Lyon (Fenton, Flushing and Montrose) and were able to visit six mills and three of them were rated three stars, Spicer Orchards, Al-Mar Orchards (a certified organic orchard) and Montrose Orchards (Mom was partial to this one [not necessarily for cider reasons, however] because it was started by James and Ivy Hill and was run by Sandy Hill until two years ago when she died). Two others were two stars and one was one star. Let me tell you, the one star joints are lucky to be in business because their cider was horrible. All in all, we have had another great October expedition and look forward to next year's, although Mom is struggling to come up with ideas for it. Here are a few pictures of the places of most interest -- rating stars behind names (although I didn't get pictures of all the real fun places).
First Day:
Yates Cider Mill **
Rochester Cider Mill ***
Miller's Big Red Apple Orchard **
Verellen Orchards ***
Second Day:
Diehl's Orchard and Cider Mill *
Al-Mar Orchards (Organic) ***
Montrose Orchards ***
Historic Parshallville Grist Mill and Cider Mill **
2 comments:
Wonderful pictures! Beautiful scenery and cider...I'm jealous. I'm glad you guys had a great time.
I'm glad you had a great time too. I'd love to take that trip at some point in my future, maybe when my kids are older.
The preschool that my first three kids went to took them to the Al-Mar orchards for a fieldtrip. That was where we learned the right way to pick an apple. We thought it was a fun place and the kids really enjoyed it.
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