Michigan’s cider industry is heading into its most important season with consumers watching their spending, producers preparing for the quieter winter months, and at least one encouraging sign: people are showing up.
With one of the country’s major apple-growing regions, a landscape shaped by the Great Lakes and a cider scene that ranges from large, widely distributed brands to small orchard-based producers, Michigan offers considerably more than a single style of cider.
Jeffrey C. Cottrell, Membership Coordinator for the Michigan Cider Association (MCA), has spent much of the summer traveling around the state visiting cideries as part of his “MCA On the Road” series.
What he is seeing is an industry that is still investing.
“The thing that is most encouraging to me during my travels are the amount of people in the tasting rooms,” Cottrell told eCiderNews.
Even when he has arrived at a cidery’s tasting room and found himself the only customer, he said that rarely lasts long. He has seen cideries expanding, new spaces under construction and existing spaces being reconfigured.
Some producers are adding tank capacity to make more cider. Others are moving fermentation elsewhere and converting former production areas into more intimate spaces for visitors and smaller events.
At one winery with a strong cider list, Cottrell arrived at 11 a.m. on a Saturday to find the place packed with bachelorette parties.
Now comes the season that matters most.
“We are ramping up into our busy part of the year for most everyone…fall,” he said. “It’s GO time in Michigan!”
Consumers Are Spending More Carefully
Busy tasting rooms don’t necessarily mean consumers are spending freely.
Cottrell said cideries are feeling the same economic pressure confronting other small businesses. One trend he has noticed is customers having one or two drinks before moving on rather than spending heavily at a single location.
Michigan’s winter months make a strong fall particularly important.
Cottrell described winter as potentially “brutal” for cider businesses as people stay home and spending slows. Producers depend on a successful fall to help carry them through that quieter period.
At the same time, Michigan tasting rooms aren’t serving just one kind of cider drinker.
The state produces cider across the spectrum from dry to sweet. Cottrell’s advice to producers, whether they are just starting out or operating at a much larger scale, is to make what they want and pay attention to what their customers are buying, while keeping something interesting available for more adventurous cider drinkers.
“Be sure to make one or two for us cider nerds out there,” he said. “That’s the hook that keeps a good blend of people coming in and buying product.”
eCiderNews Exclusive: GLINTCAP Sets 2027 Dates
Cottrell also confirmed to eCiderNews that the Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition, better known as GLINTCAP, will return May 12–14, 2027, at the Embassy Suites in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
GLINTCAP is a judged competition where professional and amateur cidermakers submit ciders and perries for evaluation. With more than 1,000 entries in recent years, it has become a major fixture on the North American cider competition calendar.
Organizers are also exploring the possibility of adding a field trip early in the 2027 event, although those plans are not yet finalized.
The announcement follows GLINTCAP’s 20th anniversary in 2026.
Cottrell has worked behind the scenes at the competition and said one of the biggest changes he has witnessed is an overall improvement in cider quality.
“As someone who works the back end and has had the opportunity to sample many bottles after the judges are finished, I can tell you that the quality has been trending upward,” he said. “It’s much more rare that you try a clunker.”
He credits cider education, particularly the work of the Cider Institute, an education organization offering technical training for cider producers, with helping makers gain the tools to improve quality.
GLINTCAP reached its high point for entries in 2021, according to Cottrell, but continues to draw just over 1,000 entries.
The scale is a long way from the competition’s early years, when Eric West and his brother could stay up through the night opening boxes, labeling bottles and sorting entries for judging. Today, Cottrell said, it takes an entire team working multiple weekends to accomplish the job.
Yet one detail from GLINTCAP’s beginnings would fit easily into today’s cider conversation: its first NonCommercial Best in Show, the top award for amateur cidermakers, went to a cider made from a single apple variety, Golden Russet.
Cider Still Begins With Agriculture
For all the changes in Michigan cider, Cottrell keeps coming back to fruit.
Some producers grow their own. Others, particularly urban cideries, build relationships with growers who supply the apples they need.
Cottrell is a home orchardist himself, and his enthusiasm is evident.
“Show me the fruit!” he said. “Tell me about your rootstock and pressures in the location!”
Rootstock, the rooted portion of the tree onto which an apple variety is grafted, can influence characteristics such as tree size and how it performs in a particular site.
But those orchard relationships also expose cider producers to the economics of farming.
Cottrell knows cidermakers who developed interesting blends only to lose access to particular fruit when a grower removed the trees. Some farmers planted cider varieties years in advance anticipating a growing market. If the financial return isn’t there, those blocks may eventually be replaced with something more profitable.
A strong relationship between cidermaker and grower can make a difference. A producer willing to commit to purchasing particular fruit may give a grower a reason to plant what that cidermaker wants.
It’s an important reminder that preserving cider varieties requires more than enthusiasm for what’s in the glass. The fruit also has to make economic sense in the orchard.
What Does Michigan Taste Like?
So what should a curious cider drinker look for in a Michigan glass?
Cottrell’s answer is acidity.
He believes one of the things people outside the state underestimate is the range and quality of Michigan cider.
Someone who has tried a cider from Blake’s, a large Michigan producer with wide distribution, has experienced one expression of the state’s cider, he said, not the entirety of what Michigan can produce.
It’s a little like tasting one Michigan apple and assuming you know the whole crop.
The characteristics found in the glass begin partly with Michigan’s geography.
The Great Lakes create numerous microclimates across the state. Their moderating influence can delay spring growth, reducing exposure to damaging early frosts, while warmer lake waters in fall can help extend the growing season.
Then there is the land itself. Michigan’s glacial history helped shape the soils where its fruit is grown.
Together, those factors contribute to terroir, the way a particular place can shape the character and flavor of an agricultural product.
But Cottrell cautions against treating terroir as something nature creates entirely on its own.
Growers matter, too.
The decisions they make in the orchard, from site and variety selection to how trees are managed, influence the fruit that ultimately reaches the cidermaker.
“In short, soil, climate, and growers contribute to what is expressed in each glass,” Cottrell said.
A Michigan Cider Guide Is Coming This Fall
For drinkers interested in exploring more of what Michigan produces, a new guide is on the way.
The Michigan Cider Association (MCA) is developing a statewide cider booklet with funding from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Craft Beverage Council.
The booklet will feature current MCA members, with Cottrell anticipating approximately 45 cidery listings.
The design is nearly complete, and the association hopes to have the guide printed and distributed by early October.
Former MCA Executive Director Paula Englin, who was involved with the project from the grant stage, is continuing to work on it with Dr. Nikki Rothwell, a Michigan State University horticultural researcher and co-owner of Tandem Ciders in Suttons Bay.
The booklet is intended to give consumers a physical guide they can carry while traveling around Michigan, with distribution planned at locations including MCA member tasting rooms.
“Sometimes, people don’t know which other companies are out there or even how to find out other cideries in Michigan,” Cottrell said.
His solution is decidedly old-school: put the information together in something people can keep in the glove box and take on the road.
Looking Beyond Michigan
Asked what Michigan cider needs to keep growing, Cottrell didn’t point to a missing ingredient.
The state already has high-quality fruit, experienced producers and consumers who are learning that cider encompasses far more than the products they may encounter on a grocery store shelf.
Instead, he sees opportunity in stronger connections across cider regions.
That includes neighboring Great Lakes states and Ontario, Canada. Cottrell enjoys playing up Michigan’s friendly rivalry with his New York cider colleagues, but he sees the success of other cider regions as something that ultimately helps Michigan as well.
Agritourism could strengthen those connections at home by bringing consumers closer to the orchards, farms and people behind the cider.
And after a summer spent traveling from cidery to cidery, Cottrell keeps returning to something that can’t easily be measured in sales figures or competition entries.
The people.
From Michigan’s largest producers to its smallest cideries, he describes a community willing to help each other, whether that means locating fruit, responding to an emergency, making a phone call or offering sensory feedback on a cider.
The industry’s challenges are real. Consumers are spending carefully, winter can be unforgiving, and growers have to make hard economic decisions about what stays planted.
But as Michigan heads toward fall, Cottrell is seeing people in tasting rooms, producers investing in their spaces and a cider community preparing for its most important months of the year.
The fruit is there. The knowledge is there. And increasingly, so are the drinkers.
Why This Matters to Ciderville
Michigan offers a snapshot of a challenge playing out across Ciderville: tasting rooms can be busy while consumers are still spending cautiously. For small producers, a strong fall isn’t simply a good season. It can provide the cushion needed to carry a business through the slower winter months.
At the same time, cider’s future depends on what happens beyond the tasting room. Growers need an economic reason to keep cider fruit in the ground, while cidermakers need the fruit to keep exploring what their region can express.
For drinkers, there’s an invitation in all of this. One cider from one large producer isn’t Michigan cider. From dry to sweet, orchard-based producers to widely distributed brands, the state rewards showing up curious and tasting beyond what you already know.
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