While up in Vermont recently I took a camping trip for three nights with one of my best friends from high school. Destination: Green River Reservoir. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous. This was “canoe camping” meaning we piled all our supplies into a canoe and paddled out to our campsite on an island in the middle of the reservoir. Our days were filled with rope swings, jumping off rocks, swimming, paddling around and exploring.

Our nights featured some tasty meals, including grilling a variety of vegetables and corn on the cob over our fire. We even cooked lobster claws over the fire one night! But this post is not about campfire eats, but about Cold Hollow, producers of what is hands down the best apple cider I’ve ever tasted. On the way home from camping I stopped at the actual cider mill for the first time in my life.  I got to taste some “first press”, the first new batch of cider for the season.  Cold Hollow doesn’t mess around with their food and beverage offerings either. I made sure to buy the obligatory one-dozen cider doughnuts (if you haven’t tasted fresh from the fryer cider doughnuts before, quit your job immediately and go do this. Then use bags full of fresh cider doughnuts to bribe your boss into re-hiring you). I also tasted a couple of the Cold Hollow creations.

First up, Cider-Ade, a slushee combination of cider and lemonade:

Good lord. This might have been the best frozen beverage I’ve ever had in my life! For reals people, no joke. Now I admit I absolutely LOVE apple cider, it may be in my top 3 beverages of all-time, but this creation was on a whole new level of awesomeness.

I also made sure to try what Cold Hollow touted as the world’s only “cider steamed” hot dogs, topping it with a horseradish mustard:

I’m not usually a hot dog eater or a fan, and I was skeptical that the “cider steaming” process would even impart any flavor, but low and behold the hot dog had a very noticeable undertone of cider flavor.  This makes me wonder why anyone would ever bother steaming hot dogs in water. Boring! Beer, juice, wine, give it a shot, let’s start steaming all our dogs in something more interesting and see how they turn out.

I left Cold Hollow with two gallons of cider, a dozen doughnuts and the memory of having eaten two extremely tasty creations. Yum. Anyone else have any cool cider related memories?

One Response

  1. Sethonious

    There is a place called “Apple Hill” in the Sierra Nevada foothills near my home town. http://www.applehill.com/ I can remember many family trips up there for apples, cider and cider doughnuts. I tried to explain to my wife what was so special about hot cider doughnuts. She asked “So is it kind of like an apple fritter?” I about lost it, the very mention of fritter while speaking of cider doughnuts is offensive to cider doughnuts everywhere. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING like having a hot cider doughnut in one hand and a big glass of cold cider in the other. That is a slice of heaven.

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