Tell us your name, your cidery name, and a brief introduction.
Photo by Angela Knox
We are Jeff and Gita Zeitler. We started Urban Forage Winery and Cider House in 2015 on a shoestring budget. We live in St. Paul and have two teenage kids.
What do you find to be the most interesting thing about cider?
What's interesting is that there's still so many unexplored possibilities with cider! With beer, you have a category that has ossified into a number of strictly defined styles that all have BJCP descriptions. Wine is much the same. But cider is wide open, it's a smaller category overall, and there's a lot of experimentation going on. It's exciting because people are trying new things all the time, and a lot of them work!
What is something you wish everyone in Minnesota knew about cider
That it's naturally gluten-free. There's no gluten in apples and cideries that operate under a wine license aren't supposed to even have grain on the premises of their winery! People with gluten allergies and celiac can find a safe alternative to a brewery taproom at their local cidery.
Tell us a bit about your cidery’s history. When were you founded? What prompted you to make cider?
We started out shortly after I was laid off from my 'real' job as a landscape architect by a company I had worked at for 8 years. I had been a cidermaker and winemaker as a hobby for over 20 years at that point, and had some recipes that I thought were pretty good, and had also learned some production techniques that didn't use preservatives as I was really into organic gardening. When I brought my homemade booze to parties people enjoyed it- so when I suddenly didn't have a job, I decided to take the leap to making cider and wine professionally.
“I found that people with residential fruit trees rarely used all the fruit they produced - if any. When I offered to pick it to make cider - I was almost always overwhelmed with gratitude”
We opened the basement winery in 2015, then the taproom in 2017. The foraging part of the business grew out of my earlier job - where I found that people with residential fruit trees rarely used all the fruit they produced - if any. When I offered to pick it to make cider- I was almost always overwhelmed with gratitude, and phone calls from their friends with fruit trees who wanted me to take their fruit too. I started to see that this wasn't an isolated thing - people all over the place had fruit they didn't want - and I was able to do something with it!
Spread the love … What cider would you recommend from another MN cidery.
I really love Keepsake's heritage apple ciders, particularly the Normandy style ones. They're on a level with some of the best European ciders. I think Nate is creating amazing things with apples grown in the Upper Midwest. Keepsake is one of the ciders that when I drink it, I think "I wish I had made that!"
How can folks find you online?
We're on Facebook and Instagram with the handle @urbanforagewinery. Our website is urbanforagewinery.com.
Photo by Angela Knox