From the Flour City to the Flower City, Rochester, New York, and its surrounding area around Lake Ontario, has long been heralded as a rich agricultural area, from lilacs to apples. Blue Toad Hard Cider takes the best of both, using apples from the Rochester region and others from Virginia then steeping the juice in dried lilac flowers. A trumpeter of forthcoming summer, the lilac flower proclaims the season softly in this salmon-hued cider, decorated in the glass with big, bouncing bubbles. The nose whispers sweet blossoms with honeyed apple and pear skin, but the palate brings in fringing floral qualities with more authority, tying juicy, semi-sweet apple into the purple-flowered, quick and clean finish.
