By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | There’s a refreshing, vibrant new bottler operating in the North Georgia mountains near Helen. No, it’s not a winery. It’s a cider maker — Sautee Hard Cider — that’s the newest bottler in Georgia.
The company shipped its initial batch of hard cider, apple and peach, to its first customer this week — to Ingles supermarket warehouse. It’s sold under the “Bull Dog” brand.
The guy behind this new venture is no amateur. In fact, he’s the person who in recent years popularized cider in the United States under the Woodchuck label. His name is Joe Cerniglia, a third-generation Italian raised in the Bronx whose family was originally from Sicily. They lived in a three-room flat, and his father was a contractor.
Cerniglia
Once Woodchuck started, it was a super success, and had 62 percent of the market out of its Proctorsville, Vermont, operation. Soon the beer makers recognized that many Americans enjoyed cider, and started cider brands of their own. Today Woodchuck has much less of the U.S. market, though the consumption is much bigger.
Cerniglia, now 76, is a high school drop-out who tired of New York City and bought a 228-acre farm in Vermont. With his brother-in-law, he started at first making wine. Then he switched to cider, beginning in 1991, and the result was Woodchuck Cider, all natural and without preservatives.
Cerniglia is credited with revising the taste for cider in the United States. Back during colonial times, and especially during Prohibition, cider was the drink of choice for many Americans. When Prohibition was voted out, Americans changed their drinking choice to beer, and cider was dormant for years.
Then came Cerniglia in 1991 with the Woodchuck brand. He asked 10 friends, “working stiffs,” he says, to put up $15,000 each for the venture “on a handshake.” When he sold Woodchuck eight years later, they each got $200,000. “Not bad,” he says.
In 1999, he sold his cidery for what is said to be $30 million, which he doesn’t deny, and retired, to Skidaway Island, near Savannah. Meanwhile, Woodchuck continued to thrive, and in 2012 the renamed parent company was sold to the C&C Group of Ireland for $305 million. The firm owns several cider labels in Europe.
In organizing Sautee Hard Cider, Cerniglia used his previous approach for capital, this time asking 20 individuals to put up $20,000 each, again on a handshake. “The bankers couldn’t believe it,” he says. It’s been two years since the business began. Today the firm has six employees, and is “just getting started in production.”
Cerniglia brings in apple juice concentrate from Washington state to make his apple cider. At Woodchuck “We did everything, from crushing the apples to bottling, and took it from there. But today we just use the concentrate to make the cider. It’s a whole lot easier.”
Today the full-bearded Cerniglia (he looks like the Burt’s Bees label guy) is a sometimes resident of White County, with a home near Sautee while overseeing his up-and-coming cidery. For his brand name of “Bull Dog Cider,” he got the idea when visiting the home of a friend in the North Georgia mountains. “She had bulldog statues everywhere, all around the house. That’s when the idea hit me.” The Bull Dog logo looks ferocious. The label says it’s cider “with a serious attitude.”
The bottle caps are distinctive, with a “JC” initial on them, for the president and CEO of the firm.
Look for the Bull Dog Cider brand to grow in popularity — if Joe Cerniglia’s present venture in White County, Ga. takes off like his earlier effort.
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