Cider Bars In Seattle, Portland

Will apples supplant grapes at your favorite bar?

Where there are apples, cider can't be too far away.

In recent years, a wellspring of craft cider operations has erupted from the New England region to the West Coast. Even Texas has its own small-batch cidery as of this year.

On the heels of this movement, bars across the country are taking cider-y bents. In New York, Seamus Mullen's splashy restaurant Tertulia uses the cider houses of Spain as its muse and serves a hard, dry cider from the tap.

In Seattle, the Noble Fir bar pours ciders from local cider houses such as Snowdrift. At any given time, the year-old bar offers three to six ciders on tap and another five or six in the bottle.

Bushwhacker, a bar in Portland, Oregon, is dedicated exclusively to the stuff. Owner and cider maker Jeff Smith has seven ciders on tap and hundreds in bottles, including proprietary creations. Most recently, he aged cider in used gin barrels from Ransom Spirits.

If you can't make it to Portland, try the Blend cider ($15) from Washington's Tieton Cider Works as a delicious entry point to the genre.