ARMADA, Mich. – Located on an 800-acre family-owned farm, Blake’s Hard Cider has always used its landscape as inspiration for its products. Known for its innovative liquid like El Chavo, a sweet and spicy mango habanero cider, and Tonic, a cucumber ginger semi-sweet, the Blake’s have found success in using ingredients right off the property.

blakessantarosacider“The Foraged Series is an extension of our company’s mission and vision, to pay homage to our roots and foundation of being a farm first” said owner and founder, Andrew Blake.

The first release of six in the line up is a semi-sweet made with Santa Rosa plums that were found mistakenly on the farm.

“The inspiration for Santa Rosa came from tasting an orange wine from Italy. I knew that the skin fermented white wine was a huge envelope push in the wine world and I wasn’t sure how I could push a similar envelope with cider,” said Robert Lauer, Cider maker. “It wasn’t until I stumbled upon our Mirabelle plums in our storage cooler that I acted on the plum-skin ferment idea. In addition to the prized yellow plums, we also grow quite a few acres of Santa Rosa plums and the skins of those plums gave a richer hue to the cider.”

The label expresses that the flesh of the plums really compliment the late season apple varieties in the base.

Paralleled with the rest of the Blake’s products, Santa Rosa is all natural, gluten free and made with Blake’s own apples.

“Long and cold fermentation was the best approach at really bringing this liquid to life,” said Lauer. “We fermented our apple cider base on plums skins for over a month, and the finished product really exemplifies our patience.”

Santa Rosa is described as bold, yet refined and the package’s artwork really expresses that.

Santa Rosa comes in at 5% ABV and will be available January 2018 in limited quantities in 500 ML bottles. To find Blake’s nearest you, please visit blakeshardcider.com/cider-finder.

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