Review of Spin Cider’s Sammamish River Trail, made from a blend of apples, including bittersweet & bittersharp cider apples. It is my first time trying this, but I’ve had their An Apple for Teacher for WA Cider Week, and have their Tour de Lopez (loganberry) in the fridge.

<This is a review of a sample bottle provided to Cider Says by Spin Cider.  Although I will take care to treat it the same as any other review, there is always the potential for bias as I received this for free.  The only consideration I knowingly made was pushing this up in my cider review que, considering it is a new release and the info may be helpful for folks deciding to purchase it.  I love free stuff, especially cider!  Want your cider or cider-related product reviewed here?  Contact me.>

Cider:  Sammamish River Trail
Cidery:  Spin Cider
Cidery Location:  Olalla (Kitsap County) WA
ABV:  8.2%
How Supplied:  750ml bottles
Style: American craft heritage cider

Availability:  currently here, direct from the cidery (local pickup or shipped), with hopes to expand in 2021 to farmer’s markets, festivals, and bottle shops

Cider Description:  This complex, apple-heavy blend highlights juices of bittersweet and sharp cider apples with a touch of our own apple brandy to bring out the flavors. The blend takes its name from the popular bike trail that begins at the northern tip of Lake Washington and follows the Sammamish River past the Woodinville wineries and on to Redmond.

Cidery Description: 
Why “Spin”?  Cathie and I are bikers and got inspired to open a cidery while on a bike ride in Vermont. We name (almost) all our ciders after our favorite bike routes.
Our approach.  We follow a more traditional cider-making approach, working only with fresh juice that we press ourselves. We age all our ciders, never filter, and never use concentrates. We do very small batches – sometimes only 12 cases per blend.
What’s in the blend?  Most of our blends use both cider apples and dessert apples. Our orchard is young, and just starting to produce, so we source some of our fruit from Yakima and some from an Oregon grower. When we add other fruits, we try to use pure juice – nothing fake. When possible…we grow the fruits ourselves.

Price:  n/a (retails for $15)
Where Bought:  n/a
Where Drank:  home
How Found:  it showed up with the WA Cider Week samples

First Impression:  Light gold hue. Low carbonation. Smells of tart heirloom apple juice.

Tasting Notes: Semi-dry. Light bodied. Moderate tartness and acidity. Hints of bitterness and tannins. No sourness or funk. Notes of complex heirloom apple with some lemon and floral. Moderate length tart finish. Moderate flavor intensity, complexity, apple flavor, and sessionability.

My Opinion:  I liked it, as did my husband. Easy to drink, yet with some complexity from the cider apples.

Most Similar to:  Whitewood Jonathan and Spin Cider An Apple for Teacher (except slightly more complex and less sweet)

Closing Notes:  This would be perfect in a multipack, as its a nice everyday type of selection, but slightly stepped up from most of the multipack options, even here in the cider capitol of Western WA.

Have you tried Spin Cider?  What did you think?