Product: Woodchuck Pear Draft Cider Producer: The Green Mountain Cidery, Middlebury Vermont Approximate Retail Value: $6.99/6-Pack Category: Beer Country of Origin: United States Reviewer: SexHerald Staff The F Words: Flavor – Naturally sweet and flowery, though extremely mild. In my estimation, delicious. Feel – Very light and barely carbonated. Finish – Over almost before it starts, leaving a trace of sweetness.

Rating:

As you might expect, pear cider is structurally similar to apple cider, only made using the juice from smooshed pears rather than smooshed apples. Hard cider has a long history in this country, from its origins in Colonial America to its widespread use as an introductory drink for underage drinkers today - and now that we’re the most powerful nation in the world, we can ferment whatever we damn well please! It is because of this characteristically American attitude that we get a drink rather dissimilar to the other 1/2 mile of bottles in your grocer’s cooler. Brewed in Middlebury Vermont, Woodchuck Pear is unlike apple ciders of any brand in that it has a light, distinctly floral flavor. The pear flavor is faint, though authentic, and you can smell it more than you can taste it. The first sip yields the mild essence of pear, which lingers for half a second at the tip of your tongue and is gone leaving just a hint of natural sweetness on your lips. Clean and crisp from start to finish, Woodchuck Pear Cider has little aftertaste.

Where some ciders are dry or tangy, Woodchuck Pear is sweet and flowery. It is champagne-like in color and only slightly carbonated. Most pear ciders on the market are actually apple cider with pear juice added after fermentation, and although the ingredients listing is silent on the matter, Woodchuck Pear doesn’t taste like theirs or anyone else’s apple cider. Instead, it tastes remarkably like your average pear.

Although the pear flavor is certainly perceptible, Woodchuck Pear Cider is extremely mild. Oversized rodent-teeth aside, it has no bite whatsoever and its mild sweetness does not complement strong flavors but rather disappears beneath them. It is thus ill-suited for fajita night at Josh’s, and would feel much more comfortable at your old roommate’s backyard wedding, or at the company picnic by the lake. It could even be your hair-of-the-dog treatment for Sunday morning...noonish, shall we say?

Now, I hold that pear is a mild enough flavor that in order to be authentically represented in booze format – that is, without the introduction of extra sugar or genetically engineered uber-pears – it must remain mild. Nonetheless, were this cider to be served at room temperature, you could easily forget that you were drinking it and drown mid-swallow. And although I’m strangely charmed by the idea of a bottled cider that plays hard-to-get, some of you may be looking for something a little more straightforward...and who could blame you. Thus, I will deduct half a star for excessive mildness.

Where it is light compared to most apple ciders, Woodchuck Pear seems extremely light relative to all but the wateriest of cheap beers. Conventional wisdom advises against drinking anything in a green bottle before lunch, but I’d be tempted to serve this with cantaloupe slices. It’s clean and very tasty, not to mention an American tradition that at least a handful of us can agree upon. So while meat-and-potatoes types will be better served to stick with their stouts, it seems to me that we should make at least a little room in the Styrofoam cooler for Woodchuck Pear Cider next summer. If nothing else, we can use it to cleanse our respective pallets before Uncle Rick pulls the brats off the grill. WoodchuckPearDraftCider
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