FRANKLIN, W.Va. (AP) - A new option for people who enjoy alcoholic beverages crafted in the state of West Virginia is available.
Swilled Dog is a new hard cider company that just started its operations in September 2016 in Franklin in Pendleton County. It is a family-owned business.
The Glover family, including Brad Glover, his two sisters and their families, started Swilled Dog. There are eight family members working to make the hard cider. They all contribute and work on pressing the apples and making the cider, Brooke Glover, Brad’s wife and Swilled Dog’s director of sales and marketing, said.
“It’s been a blast,” Brooke said. “There are a lot of different places to start businesses, but our hearts are in West Virginia and we know the people are going to help make our business successful.”
Franklin is a small, quiet town tucked into the heart of the Potomac Highlands region of Pendleton County. Franklin is a 45-minute drive west of Harrisonburg, Virginia, and an hour’s drive east of Elkins.
A tradition of the region is the local hard cider, fermented every year by locals - mostly in barrels stored in their cellars using fresh-pressed local West Virginia apples. It is here that the Glover family began learning about hard cider. Whether they experimented with their own batches, or stumbled across cider in their friend’s cellars, they became hooked. It didn’t take long for the idea of launching a hard cider company to take hold across the entire family.
Swilled Dog opened its 1,100 square foot cidery in summer 2016. Swilled Dog is only the second cidery to open in the state of West Virginia, Brooke said.
When deciding to name the company, the family did a lot of research, Brad Glover, one of the owners of Swilled Dog, said.
“It is really difficult to find names that aren’t in use in the craft beer and wine and cider industries because there’s been a huge boom in all these different things,” Brad said. “Our love of animals is throughout our entire family. We have all have dogs so we wanted to make sure we incorporated animals and dogs into it. Dog was kind of a natural choice. Swilled is a term (that means) to really enthusiastically drink or consume heavily. It’s an old-timey word we kind of wanted to bring back. It’s been used a lot in the Revolutionary (War) days and the pre-Prohibition days.
“It is fun and enthusiastic and incorporates our love for animals.”
Swilled Dog’s logo was drawn by local artist Michelle Sites from Franklin, Brad said.
The logo features a black and white border collie leaning against a cider apple tree with cider apples on the ground and the shape of the state of West Virginia in the tree. Sites drew the logo and the labels for the cider bottles. The labels are an expanded version of the logo with a mountain scene wrapped around the bottle, Brad said.
The dog on the logo is a border collie, which is synonymous with orchards in the United Kingdom,?and the Glover family has border collies, Brad said.
Swilled Dog has plans to start selling its hard cider soon. The company is currently working with a restaurant in Morgantown and Parkersburg to offer Swilled Dog hard cider there. The company also plans to expand which restaurants offer its cider and is still working on these plans, Brooke said.
The response and interest in the cider has been overwhelming. Swilled Dog has had to scale up very quickly. By April the company plans on having enough product stocked up to distribute on a large scale. It plans to expand based on sales, Brooke said.
“We do have plans to, not only be in the state, but to also distribute regionally and then nationally,” she said. The Glover family started Swilled Dog because they all have a love for cider, Brooke said.
“We saw the need for cider in the state of West Virginia,” she said. “We’ve seen the success that has happened in Virginia with a lot of the cideries there. There’s so many that have popped up. The growth has been exponential in Virginia and we’ve seen that there’s not a saturation yet in the market for hard cider. It’s still early enough in the process, but there is a saturation of craft beers. So we saw that there was a need there. West Virginia clearly has the market for it.”
West Virginia is an amazing place to grow apples, Brooke said.
Swilled Dog is planning its own orchard and is planning on growing its own cider apples, because cider apples are difficult to get, she said. The company plans to plant 130 trees. So far 80 trees have been planted in Franklin.
There is room to plant thousands of trees, and Swilled Dog will do so eventually, she said.
The family has been working with West Virginia University?to learn how to plant and take care of the cider apple trees and how to take care of them during the winter and graft them, Brooke said.
The apples being planted or grafted have names like northern spy, golden russet, roxbury russet, goldrush, pippin, King David, winesap, Ashmead’s kernel, Arkansas black, Hewes crab, black twig.
All of Swilled Dog’s ciders will contain less than 7 percent alcohol. The company will have six different types of cider. Swilled Dog will be offering ciders named Apple Bottom and West Virginia Scrumpy soon.
Apple Bottom is a semi-dry cider. It is a blend of apples and champagne yeast fermented in the slow traditional manner. It offers a balance of sharpness and acidity with a refreshing, crisp, full-bodied apple flavor, the company explains.
West Virginia Scrumpy 2016 is a limited edition, small-batch cider. It is an off-dry cider and has a tart finish. Every apple in this cider was hand-picked in West Virginia and donated. There are plans to make a bigger batch for 2017.
Bunny Slope is coming soon. It is a nice and easy transition to hard cider for craft beer lovers. After the initial fermentation process, the perfect amount of hops are added for a bitter, citrusy taste.
Granny’s Gold is coming soon as well. It is a semi-sweet cider made by stopping the fermentation process at just the right time to leave the perfect amount of residual sugar with a nice tart finish. It is the perfect balance of acidity and sweetness.
Pumpkin Patch is coming in the future. It is a blend of apples and fresh pumpkin with chai tea spices.
Caramel Apple is a cider planned for the future as well. It is a combination of caramel and a blend of semi-sweet, tart apples.
Besides making and selling cider, Swilled Dog is also passionate about West Virginia and wants to give back and be a part of the community and be a part of the solution to problems in the state, Brooke said.
“Especially for us, animals are very, very important,” she said. “Education is very important, especially education through agriculture.”
The company would like to partner with schools in the future to teach kids how to plant and take care of apple trees. It will also be giving its time to charities in West Virginia. The company is figuring out where these places will be, she said.
“As of right now we’ve pledged a minimum of 1 percent of our sales to go toward charitable giving,” Brooke said.
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Information from: Times West Virginian, https://www.timeswv.com
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