This dry cider is a rustic blend of 11 apple varieties from local, Sebastopol orchards. Our ciders are traditionally made: we hand-pick all apples at peak ripeness, grind and press, then ferment in neutral French oak barrels. Once dry, we assemble the blend of different varieties to produce a structured, complex cider. At bottling, we add Champagne yeast and priming sugar for natural carbonation, resulting in a true and unique bottle-conditioned cider, that is completely dry. This cider is unfiltered.
Specs
Apple Varieties: Gravenstein, Arkansas Black, Winesap, Baldwin, Newtown Pippin, Spitzenburg, King of Thompkins, Rhode Island Greening, York, Courtland, and Smokehouse.
Appellation: 100% Sebastopol, Sonoma County
Harvest Brix: 12.8 to 15.2 Brix
Fermentation: French Oak (neutral) Barrels
Residual Sugar: None, Dry
Alcohol: 8.0%
Production: 250 Cases
Cidermakers: Chris Condos & Suzanne Hagins
Horse & Plow Jonathan Cider, Sonoma County
Tasting Notes
As always, fully dry with a classic profile of mulling spice aromatics, caramel apple notes, round and full with a rich, red apple character, and finishing with great tannin structure and lots of spice.
This single-varietal cider was made entirely from Jonathan apples grown by Hale’s Apple Farm here in Sebastopol. The origin of the Jonathan apple is a bit murky, but it is thought to have first been discovered in Woodstock, New York, in 1826 by a man named Jonathan Hasbrouck. As always, it was fermented until fully dry, bottle conditioned, and unfiltered. A classic profile with mulling spice aromatics, caramel apple notes, round and full with a rich, red apple character, and finishing with great tannin structure and lots of spice.
Horse & Plow makes natural wines and ciders in Sonoma County, California. The Jonathan apple is both sweet and tart, with great spice, and makes a fantastic single variety cider. We ferment the juice in neutral French oak barrels, then bottle condition for a fine bubble and dry finish. The natural yeasts settle at the bottom, you may either leave them behind, or incorporate into your cider. Cheers!
Specs
Apple Varieties: 100% Jonathan
Appellation: Sebastopol, Sonoma County
Harvest Brix: 14.0 Brix
Fermentation: French Oak (neutral) Barrels
Residual Sugar: Dry
Alcohol: 8.0%
Production: 150 Cases
Cidermakers: Chris Condos & Suzanne Hagins
Horse & Plow Hops & Honey Cider, Sonoma County
Tasting Notes
This dry-hopped cider is a blend of 10 apple varieties from local orchards. Our ciders are traditionally made: we pick all apples at peak of ripeness, and ferment in small lots until dry. Once dry, we add whole hops and age for another month. On the day of bottling, we add wildflower honey for our priming sugar and champagne yeast for a true and unique bottle-conditioned cider. This cider contains lees.
Specs
Apple Varieties: Jonathan, Baldwin, King of Tompkins, Rhode Island Greening, Gravenstein, Arkansas Black, and Black Twig.
Horse & Plow Winery merges the best of old and new world techniques to produce authentic, hand-crafted wines from Northern California.
We started Horse & Plow in 2008 to merge the best of old and new world techniques and produce authentic, hand-crafted wines. Together, we draw on our different backgrounds and talents to craft original wines from organic grapes. We utilize organic farming, small lot fermentations and traditional techniques to make balanced, food friendly and site specific wines.
Our organic vineyards dot the North Coast of California; including Sonoma, Napa & Mendocino Counties. We work exclusively with growers who are committed to superior quality by using certified organic and/ or biodynamic techniques. These sustainable practices allow us to craft wines with greater complexity and sense of place, while caring for worker health and the environment.
Organic doesn’t stop when the grapes get to the winery- our wines are made naturally with no synthetic nutrients or additives, no GMO’s, are vegan and contain low sulfites. Most importantly, we make great wine! From crisp whites to rich reds, we have a wine to please every palate!
Available States
AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MT, NE, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WI, WY
As of this moment, none of the specs mention the bottle size, but the bottles on the Horse & Plow website are 750ml. So I’m guessing these are also 750ml bottles.
Edit: I just noticed the photos show they are 750ml bottles.
Hello! We had the pleasure of tasting the Horse & Plow Farmhouse Cider. As usual, I was joined by charming Leo.
This cider came to us in a 750ml brown glass bottle with a metal crown cap AND an attached/integrated fliptop closure. I don’t see the fliptop shown in any of the images. Maybe the winery or Casemates folks can weigh in on if our bottle was unusual or if all the bottles for this case will have fliptops? I ask because they are very helpful for these larger bottles, to keep the carbonation fresh. Also makes the bottle reusable for other things, which is extra cool.
Onto the tasting! The bottle arrived mid-afternoon; I chilled it for about three hours before serving. Here are my notes:
Sniffing: yeasty with a kind of earthy/barnyard smell. It comes by the “farmhouse” name honestly.
Taste: it’s not ‘apple-forward.’ It’s yeasty, but not in a bad way – sort of beer-y. Not at all sweet, but also not tart. I thought it was well balanced for its style. For those who know cider, I would call it “scrumpy-adjacent.” It’s not a scrumpy, but it has some of those elements: mixture of apples, cloudy, not pronounced apple/fruit flavor, some light tannins, very carbonated with a fine bubble. I know it’s described as dry, but again, I found it more “in-between” than dry. That may be in part because we tend to drink drier, small batch ciders in general, rather than the big name brands.
We drank the whole bottle down in one sitting and would absolutely have more. It’s fine on a warm night like we’re having, but it would also work into fall. If you’re a cider person or you light a light “sessionable” beer, you would probably enjoy this.
Charming Leo says:
We chilled this for a few hours before serving.
Nose: Fermented citrus fruit-forward, with notes of earth and fruit rind.
Palate: In my experience, “good” ciders are dry and tart and/or astringent, and “bad” ciders are basically hard Martinelli’s, i.e. very sweet with heavy apple and/or pear. This is none of those things. It sits comfortably and very pleasantly between those two extremes, hinting at both tart and sweet. Some yeast notes as well, but not strongly so. Medium, unobtrusive carbonation. Perhaps its only downside is that no single fruit flavor stands out and identifies itself. It’s basically a mixed citrus punch – but a very agreeable and eminently drinkable one.
Finishes very clean, leaving only a slight fruit note. Leaves some sediment in the glass, which we only noticed when looking for it.
We finished the bottle in one sitting, and would be happy to pick up some more.
I would say I disagree with Leo about the citrus notes – I didn’t find any of that. I would say it’s got a light straw note. Not grassy/hay, but more a little funk I associate with scrumpies and similar ciders. We both agreed that if it were “about $15 a bottle or less” it would be a good deal. That turned out to be a good price point guess!
(BTW, when I mentioned sessionable beers, I didn’t mean to imply this was of a similar ABV typical of session beers. I mean that it’s very easy-drinking. Definitely a higher ABV than the usual session beer!)
Horse & Plow
Cider with……Hops and honey!!! Let’s go!
I got their wine before. I was excited to try this one out (Thanks- Matt!). Hops.
I know this is a thing, so let’s get into it…
Bottle cap.
It’s difficult for me to describe the smell. But it’s honest to the taste. Not like crisp apples to me. Almost like a bandaid. Very faint fruit aroma I have to squint my nose for.
I moved this to a more appropriate smaller glass instead of the pint glass when I started checking the nose. Looks like a hazy ipa. There was a slight amount of sediment at the bottom, but less than I expected with the “lees” warning on the bottle.
DRY. Sour. Tartness up front, astringency around the edges, almost little like flat champagne. More medium bodied that most ciders I’ve had.
Barely a whisper of honey, if that. Maybe more like faint wild flower. I think the hops give it body, but it’s more like hay to me. Don’t expect beer adjacent. I can’t say to expect a mead either. It’s pretty unique. The flavor profiles feel all over the place but once your mouth gets used to the tartness, there is more complexity.
Overall, I’d call this a curiosity drink. I honestly didn’t care for it that much. I could see this appealing to people who are into sour, cask-aged beers. I like their wines, so I’m tempted to get a 6er just to see what the others are like.
Also, you can rearrange the letters in “hops and honey” to spell out : “phoney shadow”. Do with that what you will.
We are lab rats a couple of times a year. Every time, I could probably explain/describe the wine/whatever in one sentence. “Yep, sure, I like cider, and this is fine.” (That’s tits in my world.) Or with a wine we had a while back, “Yeah, no, would not willingly drink again.” (Ass? But ass-ass, not cake ass.)
BUT I feel a pressure to write more. I feel like every time I post, there is someone else who posts pictures and long descriptions with fancy tasting words and hints of unripe stone fruit and minerality, and I just want to say, “Mmm, sorta like licking a rock then biting an unripe peach. Not a thing I want to do again, thanks.”
We drink a wide range of things here at home. I literally choose wines under $8 to buy at Trader Joe’s based on how cute the label is. We also have some very nice bottles of older age, all that. There’s 25 year single malts and Wild Turkey 101 on the shelf.
I guess the problem is, one person’s tits are (is?) another person’s ass. Or at least that for every ass person, there’s someone who’s all about the tits. (Is this a metaphor, or no?)
I liked the bottle we had. If this were a case of the varietal we had, we’d have already purchased. I don’t know if I’d like the “Hops & Honey,” but clearly the labrat for it did not.
@digerifoo2 these reviews are fine. It’s a weird product but I do have some sense of what these two are like. If they posted fewer words but more evaluation, I wouldn’t know if this is just a fancy strongbow or something worthwhile.
@digerifoo2 As a noob to these analyses, I do appreciate them. And I’ve found that if there’s things I don’t understand, I just ask and the nice folks here explain. Although I’d appreciate a “dumb” summary, such as “Like drinking sand” or “Be prepared for gritty texture” or “Sweet as old Welch’s.” Something that even this 'Kat (who, yes, still buys a wine because the bottle is pretty) (and who also, yes, would as a 'Kitten let the bottle of Welch’s sit in the fridge 'til it got “fizzy,” as I called it) can fully understand.
@digerifoo2@Ten9Eight Strongbow is more aggressively apple and cider with a strong apple taste. It’s got that ‘crisp apple’ thing most big commercial ciders have. (I’m thinking Ace, Magner’s, Angry Orchard. HEY ITS APPLE.) This is more muted than that.
@digerifoo2 no, they wouldn’t. How on earth does one person saying “I like it” help anybody else determine whether they would?
Lab rats need to provide as much description and objective* evaluation as they can with the opinion part clearly separate.
*Objective is obviously difficult with sensory perceptions, but it’s nonetheless worth trying to be as clear and objective as possible.
How much more are you saving by buying a full case?
(Note: tax and shipping are not included in savings calculations.)
Horse & Plow Mixed Ciders - $35 = 18.42%
I am buying a case just to support cider sales. but I yearn for sweet sparkling cider sales! I think once I got a raspberry chipotle cider was that AMAZING and I still dream about it
@TrinSF YES! I totally meant mead. but honestly I’d be really happy with sweet sparkling mead or cide both. I’m not sophisticated enough for most of the wines (ex: really really don’t like red)
Appreciate the rattage. Not usually a cider guy but curious and this seems a bear appropriate beverage coming into fall.
/giphy satisfying-totally-tomato
BTW, I just want to say thanks to the @Casemates and Wine Country Connect folks for sending us “the weird stuff.” Before the bottle arrived, I was letting charming Leo know we were ratting.
He said, “Is it a red?” (All things being equal, Leo prefers reds over whites. I am a person who sometimes gets headaches from reds.)
I told him I didn’t know BUT that my impression is that at some point I said I prefer red whites and more importantly, that @Casemates knows we “like the weird stuff.” The ciders. The meads! OOo, mead.
About two hours later the bottle arrived and I was like, “What did I tell you? We’re those rats.”
I know it’s important to have a range of rat experiences and levels, but I also figure it’s good to send something like mead or cider to at least one rat who drinks that on the regular. As in, I will go into craft beer places and ask what cider’s on tap, and I have had subscriptions to micro-batch artisanal meaderies and stuff. Probably 25 percent of our “cellar” bottles (bottom shelf of a 7 foot liquor cabinet) is just meads and ciders and some Woot dessert wines.
Anyway, thanks, @Casemates. Keep sending us the weird stuff.
@TrinSF Poor casemates let me try to rat once. And I 100% failed the assignment (it was many many years ago and I had the idea to “save it for a special occasion” not realizing I was supposed to be giving a review asap.) Thanks for your hard work and vigilance giving us reviews!
Hi All!, Its Chris, the winemaker and cidermaker for Horse & Plow. Sorry for the delay. I’m actually press apples and sampling grapes today. You may have a few questions on the ciders. So, all the cider apples are hand picked, pressed and barrel fermented in neutral French Oak barrels. All the ciders are dry and naturally carbonated in the bottle(and do contain some lees). If you like some of the yeast, shake the bottle and then pour. If you don’t just slowly pour it off the sediment. We are offering 3 dry ciders: Farmhouse, Jonathan, and Hops & Honey. Farmhouse is a blend of 12-14 different apple varieties with the base being Gravenstein. The Jonathan is 100% Jonathan varietal. The last is Hops & Honey. A blend of 10+ apple varieties. I dry hop it with mainly cascade hops grown in Sebastopol. It’s dry hopped for 2 weeks then I add Honey for my priming sugar and some Champagne yeast then bottle it up. I hope you all get to try these small lot dry ciders made by a winemaker. Cheers, Chris
Nice breakdown of the ciders, sounds like a bold and rustic mix with great complexity. I’d love to hear which one is the crowd favorite among the blends.
Horse & Plow Farmhouse Cider, Sonoma County
Tasting Notes
Specs
Horse & Plow Jonathan Cider, Sonoma County
Tasting Notes
Specs
Horse & Plow Hops & Honey Cider, Sonoma County
Tasting Notes
Specs
What’s Included
6-bottles:
Case:
Price Comparison
Not for sale on winery website, $264/case MSRP
About The Winery
Available States
AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MT, NE, NV, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WI, WY
Estimated Delivery
Monday, Sep 15 - Tuesday, Sep 16
Horse & Plow Mixed Ciders
6 bottles for $94.99 $15.83/bottle + $1.33/bottle shipping
Case of 12 for $154.99 $12.92/bottle + $1/bottle shipping
As of this moment, none of the specs mention the bottle size, but the bottles on the Horse & Plow website are 750ml. So I’m guessing these are also 750ml bottles.
Edit: I just noticed the photos show they are 750ml bottles.
@kawichris650 yep. Labrat shortly.
@kawichris650 The photos here are labeled 750ml, too
What is the drinking window like for ciders?
Hello! We had the pleasure of tasting the Horse & Plow Farmhouse Cider. As usual, I was joined by charming Leo.
This cider came to us in a 750ml brown glass bottle with a metal crown cap AND an attached/integrated fliptop closure. I don’t see the fliptop shown in any of the images. Maybe the winery or Casemates folks can weigh in on if our bottle was unusual or if all the bottles for this case will have fliptops? I ask because they are very helpful for these larger bottles, to keep the carbonation fresh. Also makes the bottle reusable for other things, which is extra cool.
Onto the tasting! The bottle arrived mid-afternoon; I chilled it for about three hours before serving. Here are my notes:
Sniffing: yeasty with a kind of earthy/barnyard smell. It comes by the “farmhouse” name honestly.
Taste: it’s not ‘apple-forward.’ It’s yeasty, but not in a bad way – sort of beer-y. Not at all sweet, but also not tart. I thought it was well balanced for its style. For those who know cider, I would call it “scrumpy-adjacent.” It’s not a scrumpy, but it has some of those elements: mixture of apples, cloudy, not pronounced apple/fruit flavor, some light tannins, very carbonated with a fine bubble. I know it’s described as dry, but again, I found it more “in-between” than dry. That may be in part because we tend to drink drier, small batch ciders in general, rather than the big name brands.
We drank the whole bottle down in one sitting and would absolutely have more. It’s fine on a warm night like we’re having, but it would also work into fall. If you’re a cider person or you light a light “sessionable” beer, you would probably enjoy this.
Charming Leo says:
I would say I disagree with Leo about the citrus notes – I didn’t find any of that. I would say it’s got a light straw note. Not grassy/hay, but more a little funk I associate with scrumpies and similar ciders. We both agreed that if it were “about $15 a bottle or less” it would be a good deal. That turned out to be a good price point guess!
(BTW, when I mentioned sessionable beers, I didn’t mean to imply this was of a similar ABV typical of session beers. I mean that it’s very easy-drinking. Definitely a higher ABV than the usual session beer!)
Labrat reporting August 21, 2025.
Horse & Plow
Cider with……Hops and honey!!! Let’s go!
I got their wine before. I was excited to try this one out (Thanks- Matt!). Hops.
I know this is a thing, so let’s get into it…
Bottle cap.
It’s difficult for me to describe the smell. But it’s honest to the taste. Not like crisp apples to me. Almost like a bandaid. Very faint fruit aroma I have to squint my nose for.
I moved this to a more appropriate smaller glass instead of the pint glass when I started checking the nose. Looks like a hazy ipa. There was a slight amount of sediment at the bottom, but less than I expected with the “lees” warning on the bottle.
DRY. Sour. Tartness up front, astringency around the edges, almost little like flat champagne. More medium bodied that most ciders I’ve had.
Barely a whisper of honey, if that. Maybe more like faint wild flower. I think the hops give it body, but it’s more like hay to me. Don’t expect beer adjacent. I can’t say to expect a mead either. It’s pretty unique. The flavor profiles feel all over the place but once your mouth gets used to the tartness, there is more complexity.
Overall, I’d call this a curiosity drink. I honestly didn’t care for it that much. I could see this appealing to people who are into sour, cask-aged beers. I like their wines, so I’m tempted to get a 6er just to see what the others are like.
Also, you can rearrange the letters in “hops and honey” to spell out : “phoney shadow”. Do with that what you will.
Seriously, if rats could just say “ass” or “tits” it would be more useful than these reviews
@digerifoo2 Honestly, I hear you.
We are lab rats a couple of times a year. Every time, I could probably explain/describe the wine/whatever in one sentence. “Yep, sure, I like cider, and this is fine.” (That’s tits in my world.) Or with a wine we had a while back, “Yeah, no, would not willingly drink again.” (Ass? But ass-ass, not cake ass.)
BUT I feel a pressure to write more. I feel like every time I post, there is someone else who posts pictures and long descriptions with fancy tasting words and hints of unripe stone fruit and minerality, and I just want to say, “Mmm, sorta like licking a rock then biting an unripe peach. Not a thing I want to do again, thanks.”
We drink a wide range of things here at home. I literally choose wines under $8 to buy at Trader Joe’s based on how cute the label is. We also have some very nice bottles of older age, all that. There’s 25 year single malts and Wild Turkey 101 on the shelf.
I guess the problem is, one person’s tits are (is?) another person’s ass. Or at least that for every ass person, there’s someone who’s all about the tits. (Is this a metaphor, or no?)
I liked the bottle we had. If this were a case of the varietal we had, we’d have already purchased. I don’t know if I’d like the “Hops & Honey,” but clearly the labrat for it did not.
@digerifoo2 That would do absolutely nothing for those of us who prefer a good bellybutton.
@digerifoo2 these reviews are fine. It’s a weird product but I do have some sense of what these two are like. If they posted fewer words but more evaluation, I wouldn’t know if this is just a fancy strongbow or something worthwhile.
@digerifoo2 As a noob to these analyses, I do appreciate them. And I’ve found that if there’s things I don’t understand, I just ask and the nice folks here explain. Although I’d appreciate a “dumb” summary, such as “Like drinking sand” or “Be prepared for gritty texture” or “Sweet as old Welch’s.” Something that even this 'Kat (who, yes, still buys a wine because the bottle is pretty) (and who also, yes, would as a 'Kitten let the bottle of Welch’s sit in the fridge 'til it got “fizzy,” as I called it) can fully understand.
@digerifoo2 @Ten9Eight Strongbow is more aggressively apple and cider with a strong apple taste. It’s got that ‘crisp apple’ thing most big commercial ciders have. (I’m thinking Ace, Magner’s, Angry Orchard. HEY ITS APPLE.) This is more muted than that.
@digerifoo2 no, they wouldn’t. How on earth does one person saying “I like it” help anybody else determine whether they would?
Lab rats need to provide as much description and objective* evaluation as they can with the opinion part clearly separate.
*Objective is obviously difficult with sensory perceptions, but it’s nonetheless worth trying to be as clear and objective as possible.
Anyone having issues with the coupon code?
@Acousticman77 nevermind. I’m dumb
How much more are you saving by buying a full case?
(Note: tax and shipping are not included in savings calculations.)
Horse & Plow Mixed Ciders - $35 = 18.42%
Been a while since MO wasn’t on the list of shipping states.
I do like cider and mead more than wine, and I appreciate the notes in the reviews. I’m in!
/showme fattest-feared-wood
@mediocrebot Not what I would have expected, but definitely bringing some bottles to D&D night.
I am buying a case just to support cider sales. but I yearn for sweet sparkling cider sales! I think once I got a raspberry chipotle cider was that AMAZING and I still dream about it
@whitelightertre I have a bottle of that in the fridge door waiting for tonight.
@whitelightertre THIS: https://casemates.com/forum/topics/batch-mead-selections
OH WAIT that was mead. Did you perhaps mean mead? Hmmm.
@TrinSF YES! I totally meant mead. but honestly I’d be really happy with sweet sparkling mead or cide both.
I’m not sophisticated enough for most of the wines (ex: really really don’t like red)
Appreciate the rattage. Not usually a cider guy but curious and this seems a bear appropriate beverage coming into fall.
/giphy satisfying-totally-tomato
BTW, I just want to say thanks to the @Casemates and Wine Country Connect folks for sending us “the weird stuff.” Before the bottle arrived, I was letting charming Leo know we were ratting.
He said, “Is it a red?” (All things being equal, Leo prefers reds over whites. I am a person who sometimes gets headaches from reds.)
I told him I didn’t know BUT that my impression is that at some point I said I prefer red whites and more importantly, that @Casemates knows we “like the weird stuff.” The ciders. The meads! OOo, mead.
About two hours later the bottle arrived and I was like, “What did I tell you? We’re those rats.”
I know it’s important to have a range of rat experiences and levels, but I also figure it’s good to send something like mead or cider to at least one rat who drinks that on the regular. As in, I will go into craft beer places and ask what cider’s on tap, and I have had subscriptions to micro-batch artisanal meaderies and stuff. Probably 25 percent of our “cellar” bottles (bottom shelf of a 7 foot liquor cabinet) is just meads and ciders and some Woot dessert wines.
Anyway, thanks, @Casemates. Keep sending us the weird stuff.
@TrinSF Poor casemates let me try to rat once. And I 100% failed the assignment (it was many many years ago and I had the idea to “save it for a special occasion” not realizing I was supposed to be giving a review asap.) Thanks for your hard work and vigilance giving us reviews!
Hi All!, Its Chris, the winemaker and cidermaker for Horse & Plow. Sorry for the delay. I’m actually press apples and sampling grapes today. You may have a few questions on the ciders. So, all the cider apples are hand picked, pressed and barrel fermented in neutral French Oak barrels. All the ciders are dry and naturally carbonated in the bottle(and do contain some lees). If you like some of the yeast, shake the bottle and then pour. If you don’t just slowly pour it off the sediment. We are offering 3 dry ciders: Farmhouse, Jonathan, and Hops & Honey. Farmhouse is a blend of 12-14 different apple varieties with the base being Gravenstein. The Jonathan is 100% Jonathan varietal. The last is Hops & Honey. A blend of 10+ apple varieties. I dry hop it with mainly cascade hops grown in Sebastopol. It’s dry hopped for 2 weeks then I add Honey for my priming sugar and some Champagne yeast then bottle it up. I hope you all get to try these small lot dry ciders made by a winemaker. Cheers, Chris
@ChrisCondos Done
@ChrisCondos
Good to see you could join us with a verified name we understand. Thanks
Nice breakdown of the ciders, sounds like a bold and rustic mix with great complexity. I’d love to hear which one is the crowd favorite among the blends.