When I was in college a friend of mine was asked what his favorite beer was. He responded Woodchuck. His argument was that cider is a malt beverage and was therefore beer. I've always thought that was stupid. I understand there is a relationship between the two, but they're not the same. Nonetheless, I'm going to take a moment to step away from beer for a moment to talk about cider.
Last night we went out to celebrate Amanda's birthday. I'd had a couple of very good beers with dinner, and Amanda had a couple bottles of Magners (her favorite cider). After dinner, she didn't want to go out to a club since we'd gotten caught in the rain and her hair had fallen pretty badly. But she still wanted to go out, and she wanted Strongbow on tap. Strongbow is my favorite cider, and I'll drink it just about any way. But not a lot of places around here have cider on tap. So we went to Paddy's Irish pub. Friends of ours had introduced it to us a few years back, and it's a fantastic place with two great owners - Patty and Woody. Since we'd gone there for Strongbow, I switched to cider. When I first started drinking, I'd had Woodchuck. Which was okay, but it is very sweet. Then I found Strongbow, which I've always described as a dry cider. Well while drinking it last night, I realized that it is really darn sweet. Now I want to know why I ever bothered with something sweeter.
But I suppose part of that has to do with the fact that Woodchuck is a "gateway" cider. In the world of alcohol, there seems to be a trend of beverages that are okay, but popular. They end up introducing people to a type of beverage and then allow them to discover truly good versions. Woodchuck is just that kind of drink. Even though I don't drink it anymore, I wouldn't mind going back to it to see what I liked about it. Maybe I'll need to do a comparison test of cider sometime.
