Sugar Run Cidery Takes Early Wins at PA Farm Show

A new display at Deep Roots Hard Cider (top) touts the recent awards garnered by the facility as judges by panels at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg this past week. Above, Tim Wells of Hard Roots Cider (center) accepts a Best of Show trophy for The Blues, a fruit wine that is produced at the facility in Sugar Run, from PA Cider Guild president Ben Wenk (left) and deputy secretary of agriculture Cheryl Cook. It was one of five awards that he received at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg, which continues through Saturday, Jan. 11.

Story by Rick Hiduk / Submitted Photos

(originally published in the Rocket-Courier)

Tim Wells and his crew at Deep Roots Hard cider continue to add to their list of impressive wins at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg. He was notified a few days before the event officially began that he should attend the awards ceremony Saturday night (Jan. 4) because he’d done quite well. Wells didn’t mind making his way through record-breaking opening day crowds to find the bevy of ribbons awaiting him.

I won a Bronze for Jam Berries and best of Show in fruit wines for The Blues,” he told us. “And, in the cider competition, I won second place for Trouble Maker and Honey Pommeau and a first place for Apple Crisp.”

The wine judging followed a chocolate cake contest held in the same room, and the spoils were left for sampling by those who had entered wines. Wells joked that the pairing of a slice of raspberry chocolate cake went well with some of the other wines he had an opportunity to sample.

Like most of the foods and beverages entered in Farm Show competitions, wines and ciders are judged in advance so that they can be displayed in showcases with their winning placements attached. That said, participants rarely meet the panel of judges that assess their entries. Nonetheless, the judges generally leave notes that give hints as to what they liked in particular about a product or what they did not.

I did not get a judge’s sheet this year,” said Wells. “I wish I would because it kind of helps us.”

The Blues, made entirely from blueberries, has ranked well among dessert wines in the past, but this was its first big win. Honey Pommeau, a fortified cider, and Apple Crisp, Wells noted, have also done well in previous years and keep moving up the line. He entered Trouble Maker for the first time in 2024 and, this year, the judges fell in love with it.

For the most part, Wells explained, the wine judges are looking for product that is smooth with no overpowering flavors. Cider judges are gauging appearance by color and clarity, the bouquet/aroma, the balance of bitter and sweetness that gives the cider its flavor, and the heat – or sense of alcohol that comes through. Honey Pommeau is aged in a new charred oak barrel, Wells related, and he thinks the slightly smoky taste is what grabs the panel’s senses.

Tim and his wife, Lynda, opened Deep Roots Hard Cider in 2015 as a side job, but its immediate success propelled it into a full-time business by 2017. “I had to leave my full time job to focus on it because it grew faster than I or anyone else thought it would,” Wells stated. In the past year, a new tasting room and warehouse have been built as Deep Roots heads into its 10th anniversary this summer.

We’re definitely doing more sales and production and outside sales,” Wells said of the business’s evolution. “We’re doing more festivals and going further away to bigger markets,” he addde, citing Philadelphia, State College, Harrisburg, and Gettysburg as recent destinations.

Wells estimated that he and his staff participated in nearly 100 such events in 2024, “and that’s not including farmer’s markets.”

Award presenters at the Pennsylvania Farm Show included PA Cider Guild president Ben Wenk, a fifth-generation hard cider maker and owner of Ploughman Cider, and deputy secretary of agriculture Cheryl Cook.

Submitted photos

 

 

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