Review of Spin Cider’s Tour de Lopez, co-fermented apple & blackberry juice, finished with loganberry juice. It is my first time trying this, but I’ve had their An Apple for Teacher and Sammamish River Trail.

<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:  Tour de Lopez
Cidery:  Spin Cider
Cidery Location:  Olalla (Kitsap County) WA
ABV:  7.1%
How Supplied:  750ml bottles
Style: American craft heritage apple & blackberry cider finished with loganberry juice

Cider Description:  Tour de Lopez is a blend of our apple and blackberry wines, finished with juice from loganberries grown here at the farm.  This blend is a tribute to Lopez Island, the flattest, quietest, and most bike-friendly of the San Juan Islands.

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:  Dark purple-red hue.  Low to moderate carbonation.  Smells of sweet tart berry.

Tasting Notes:  Semi-dry.  Light bodied.  Moderate to high tartness and acidity.  Hints of tannins and bitterness.   No sourness or funk.  Notes of blackberry, tart green apple, and a hint of lemon.  Moderate length tart finish.  Low apple flavor.  High berry flavor.  Moderate overall flavor intensity, sessionability, and complexity.

My Opinion:  I liked it.  Lots of berry flavor.  I would have personally preferred a bit more sweetness or less tartness however.

Most Similar to:  Alpenfire Calypso, except with more berry and without the oak influence

Closing Notes:  This sure packed in a lot of berries per bottle, I assume due to both fermenting apple & berry juice together and adding more berry juice afterwards.

Have you tried Spin Cider?  What did you think?