SUTTONS BAY, MI - When Dan Young steps outside his Tandem Ciders tasting room for the short walk through the outdoor seating area, he finds it's never a quick trip back inside.
He picks up a plate from one table, some empty glasses from another and is quickly hailed by a succession of people who are filling the seats. "Hey Dan," they call out as he weaves his way through the relaxed crowd. He stops to talk briefly with some, nods and smiles at others as he heads back through the front door.
At the entrance, locals coming in to fill up their growlers hold the door for tourists carrying four-pack cans of Tandem's signature Smackintosh back to their car.
If Young ever wonders how a craft beer brewer from deep in New England ended up running an upscale hard cidery in one of the most beautiful spots in Michigan, he only has to look above his front door.
A tandem bike prominently displayed over the entrance reminds him of the young woman from Michigan he fell in love with. And how their early dates on a bicycle built for two helped cement their fascination with hard ciders, which became a business opportunity when he found himself newly married, and transplanted to Michigan on a peninsula absolutely teeming with fruit.
"Our goal has always been making really good-tasting cider," Young says, looking out over Tandem's outdoor garden area where tables full of customers are hemmed in by tall curtains of flowers and small fruit trees growing espalier-style.
"The market has gone crazy for cider."
Tandem has developed a wide range of ciders using dozens of different types of apples. It also has a few that feature plums and pears.
Its most popular is probably Smackintosh, a sweet-tart blend that tastes like a big bite into crisp apple. It's fermented from a mix of McIntosh, Northern Spy and Rhode Island Greening, and comes in at 4.5 percent alcohol by volume.
Last year, Young's team produced about 60,000 gallons of hard cider. The 12 creations on Tandem's tasting room menu are poured inside that quaint white barn just a mile from M-22. Of those, a handful are bottled and the two best-loved blends - Smackintosh and the semi-dry Green Man - are currently canned for distribution across the Lower Peninsula.
Last year, Tandem was one of the top producers of cider on the Leelanau Peninsula, state records show.
In all, Young said his team produced about 60,000 gallons in 2017. The juice of all these crushed and pressed apples - and some pears, crab apples and one type of tart plum - are sourced largely within a two-county footprint that starts right outside the taproom door.
But riding the current cider crest took a lot of work. And it wasn't a snap decision. For Young, it took a while to turn his craft brewer's heart toward the more wine-like finesse of cider making. It may have been partly osmosis. His spot is an orchard oasis. In Michigan hand-map speak, it's known as "the meaty part of the pinky."
But it also had a little to do with love.
Dan Young, at the window of his Tandem Ciders tasting room in Suttons Bay.
HAVE BIKE, WILL TANDEM
It was 1997 when Young and a friend opened The People's Pint brewpub in Greenfield, Mass. Two years later, he met Michigan native Nikki Rothwell. She was studying at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They'd been dating a year when a friend loaned them a tandem bike.
The couple liked it so much they ended up getting their own. "I guess we knew then that we were kind of making a commitment together and if we could ride a tandem," Young said, with a nod to the trust and teamwork it takes.
When Rothwell earned her doctorate degree in 2003, they rolled the two-seated bike up to their British Airways flight. When they touched down at London's Heathrow Airport, Nikki and Dan pedaled away on a U.K adventure.
They made a lot of plans while they were riding, talking of the future and sampling hard ciders and craft beers.
In 2004, they move to Michigan and eventually settled near Suttons Bay, north of Rothwell's native Kingsley.
Rothwell went to work as a district horticulturalist for Michigan State University Extension.
But after getting out of the pub business, Young found himself casting around for a new idea.
Looking back on it now, he wryly admits he wasn't as quick on the uptake as he might have been. It took him a little bit to realize just how many different varieties of apples surrounded his new home.
"I thought, 'Hey, there's a lot of fruit up here,'" he laughed. He made a couple calls. He chatted with some friends at a big New England cider producer. Then he and a buddy borrowed a 4-H apple press and cranked out a first batch, just to see what was involved. It was OK, he remembers, but hardly remarkable.
Then he sat through a session at an MSU Food and Agriculture expo. He heard about the Michigan Hard Cider Initiative, designed to get people set up and licensed for hard cider production.
"I'm hooked," he remembers thinking.
More than 30 varieties of apples, crab apples, plums and pears are used to make Tandem's hard ciders.
A BREWER'S TALENTS TURN TO CIDER
Finding traditional cider apples is tough in this era. But there were plenty of other varieties to use as Tandem's crew experimented with blends in the early years.
Much like wine with grapes, the first trick was knowing what apple combinations to use - and in what amounts - to create the taste you're trying to achieve. Lucky for Young, he was positioned amid Leelanau County's orchard buffet. He loves knowing who is growing the fruit. Who has a crab apple tree he can pick each fall. And who has an old orchard of tart Damson plums that create a lovely ruby-colored cider.
Tandem now uses dozens of types of apples to create its signature ciders.
While its classic Green Man (5% ABV) uses only Greenings, its Pretty Penny 2017 (6% ABV) is a blend of more than 30 varieties from the beloved Kilcherman's Christmas Cove Orchard in Northport.
Its Ginger-Banjie (6% ABV) features four apple varieties and the warmth of ginger root, which is on the surface of every sip. Packing a kick is the Scrumpy Little Woody (8.5% ABV), which is cider and apple brandy aged in an oak barrel.
THE DIFFERENCE IS IN THE SPIN
Cider drinkers may notice the taste of Tandem blends is very fruit-forward. So what's the difference? It could be the centrifuge.
Some cideries add yeast to their pressed apple juices and let the mixture ferment until all the sugar is gone - adding other sugar, honey or sweetener back in later. But not Tandem. Young said they stop the fermentation process when there's a certain percentage of natural sugar left in the cider. They spin the batch in a centrifuge. This twirls the yeast out, stops the fermentation, and leaves just the cider and its own sweetness.
Tandem has come a long way in a decade. In 2008, the year the tasting room opened on Setterbo Road, it produced just 5,000 gallons. Young said wine drinkers routinely turned in the driveway, thinking they'd found a new place to sample a Riesling or a Pinot. Now customers are making Tandem a destination stop, as evidenced by its handmade wooden sign by the curve in the road that comically announces, "This is it!"
"Now, we have people coming to look for our cider," Young said.
And our biking couple? Yes, they still ride together and their life is still an adventure. But now they take up a little more room on the road. Daughter Sadie has made them a trio.
IF YOU GO:
Tandem Ciders: 2055 North Setterbo Road in Suttons Bay
Summer Hours: (June to December)
Monday - Saturday: Noon to 6 p.m.
Sunday: Noon - 5 p.m.
Winter Hours: (January to May)
Monday, Thursday - Saturday: Noon to 6 p.m.
Sunday: Noon to 5 p.m.
For more information, prices and what's on tap, check the Tandem Ciders website.
To find Tandem Ciders at a store near you, check this handy distribution map.