Cider Days 2021

There might not have been a Festival Italiano this year in Belmar, but Cider Days is a go for 2021. As always, it's being held at the Lakewood Heritage Center in Belmar Park, but new for this year, the hard cider tasting has been split off from the main event.

Why? Well, the hard cider tasting has grown substantially, to the point where there wasn't really enough room to have both the tasting and the main Cider Days events at the same time.

Somewhat to my surprise, the hard cider tasting was this weekend (Sept. 25th), and the main Cider Days event is next weekend (Oct. 2-3). That means if you weren't in attendance last night, well, you've already missed the tasting event for this year.

Fortunately, I was able to get last minute tickets, and wow, the tasting event was a blast! Fourteen different cider producers were in attendance, most with 4-5 different ciders available to taste. The event was crowded (maybe too crowded, given the ongoing pandemic), with live music and food trucks in addition to the beverages. 

 My own first exposure to hard cider came while attending the University of Wales, where hard cider is a long-standing part of the local culture, consumed by coal miners and university students alike. Welsh ciders are crisp and dry with strong apple notes, but American ciders can be dry or sweet, and many incorporate citrus or other fruit flavors in addition to the standard apple. 

Personally, many of these American ciders are too sweet for my palette, but I there were plenty at this year's Cider Days tasting that I did like, including my personal best of show, Snow Capped Cider's Dabinett Reserve. It's a dry, crisp, apple-ly cider that reminds me of a really good Welsh cider. It's also apparently hard to get, as it's not listed for sale on their web site.

Snow Capped also had a Sour Cherry that was outstandingly tart and dry, but my favorite non-traditional cider of the show was the Talbott's Cider Company's Rafter IPC. Made in Palisade Colorado, this cider has  a hint of hops to round out the cider's dry apple body. It was highly quaffable, and is definitely on my list to track down. In fact, Mile High Wine and Spirits right here in Downtown Lakewood supposedly carries Talbott's, so the next time I'm in, I'm going to see if they have the Rafter IPC.

Cider Days 2014

I love the city of Lakewood's annual Cider Days. Quaint and oddly anachronistic, it harkens back to the days when Lakewood was a farming community on the outskirts of Denver.

High Brow: Cider Tasting

Today, Lakewood is a city of 145,000 people, with the area around Wadsworth and Alameda as its newly designated downtown. But Lakewood grew in a patchwork fashion, as apple orchards and farms were developed into housing, one by one.

Cider Days reflects this agricultural heritage, with displays of cider presses, saw mills, and vintage tractors. This makes it sound like Cider Days is a series of historical reenactments. And it is. But it's also part county fair, with deep-fried Snicker bars, turkey drumsticks, and funnel cake. Low brow, yes. But also delicious!

Low Brow: Fried Foods Galore

Owners of vintage tractors bring them in from all over Colorado and even beyond to participate in the Cider Day's Tractor Pull competition. There's music and cowboy-themed comedy routines.

Cider Days also has a contemporary feel, with tasting booths offering small glasses of fine hard ciders (real cider, the alcoholic kind-- not apple juice), and food trucks selling sweet barbecue tortas with Kimchi garish, potstickers, and french fries with Thai peanut dipping sauce. So it's high brow, too. Really, it's hard not to have a great time.





The event even takes place at the Lakewood Heritage Center in Belmar Park, which makes it an easy walk for anyone living in downtown Lakewood. But if you didn't make it this year, here are some photos:

Cutting Beetle Killed Pine into Boards

More Vintage Saw Mill Demonstrations

Cowboy Themed Entertainment

Pony Rides! Or are they Donkey Rides?

Antique Car Show

The Every Popular Hand-Powered Apple Press

Belmar: What's in a Name?

Why Belmar?

It's a strange name for a neighborhood in suburban Denver, with its Latinate suggestion of "beautiful" and "sea." When you google it, Belmar, New Jersey pops up as often as not. So where did the name come from?

A century ago, the area that is now downtown Lakewood was considered the country-- and just the right distance from the hustle and bustle of Denver for a quick weekend getaway. May Bonfils, daughter of Denver Post magnate Frederick Bonfils, chose the location for her 750 acre country estate, which she named Belmar.

According to biographer Jeanne Varnell, Belmar was "a private paradise," with a ornate wrought iron gates, a fountain, and a twenty-room mansion modeled after the Petit Trianon palace at Versailles. "Peacocks paraded on the lawn," and "swans floated on Grassmere Lake." She drove a Rolls Royce, "the costliest car ever sold in Colorado," and "her 70.2-carat diamond, the Idol's Eye, was one of the world's great diamonds."

May furnished the mansion with exotic furniture and art from her travels in Europe. Again, according to Varnell, May "brought back a Marie-Antoinette bed, a piano said to have been played by Chopin, and a gold chair bearing Queen Victoria's crest.

After her death, her antiques and jewelry were sold. The mansion went to the Catholic Church, which in turn sold it off to developers. The house was demolished and replaced by a nondescript office building and a parking lot. All that remains today is a series of stone steps that lead down to Kountze Lake.

Photos of May Bonfil's Belmar in it's glory days are available here: http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15330coll22/id/8643/rec/9

Walking to a Concert in Belmar Park

 

When I used to live in downtown Denver, one of the great things was being able to walk to concerts-- there was the Fillmore Auditorium, the Ogden, even the Pepsi Center, where I saw a particularly good performance by U2.

U2 won't be playing in Lakewood anytime soon, but I'm not nearly as interested in rock music as I used to be.

Walking to concerts is still a possibility, however, as it turns out there's a fantastic summer concert series in Belmar Park, put on each year by the city of Lakewood. The bands this year include bluegrass, alt-country, soul, and Celtic. I went to see the bluegrass band Harpeth Rising last week.

The outdoor amphitheater where they played is just a couple of blocks from downtown Belmar, on the west side of Wadsworth, so no driving was involved. My family and I packed a picnic dinner and a blanket, walked over, and found a spot on the grass. We listened to the music and watched the sun go down. It was a blast!