Enjoy a glass of “hard” cider at Manoff Market Cidery in New Hope and your beverage bias will buzz right off. Cider isn’t just for Fall. It’s an all-year-long delight, and is extra crisp on “Cider Night”. You can kick back your boots, listen to live bluegrass in the barn and sip away. If you prefer your cider paired with a slice of sunset over an orchard with a twist of crickets, you can enjoy it there too. After sunset, you can pair it with some heat next to a cozy barrel bonfire and make some new friends while you are at it. Chances are, you might even forget where you are, in the best kind of way.
You’ll find this and more at Manoff’s Market Cidery. It may just be the coolest, most unique thing you can do in Bucks County on a Thursday night. Owners Amy and Gary Manoff have seeded something truly special. Started in 2018, the Cidery is part of their working fruit farm, where they grow all of the fruit used to produce their own hard ciders. An evening there is a like going to an exclusive, secret party in someone’s barn, but at this party EVERYONE is welcome, including children. You may come as a stranger, but you are certain to leave as a friend and will want to come back for more. That’s exactly the way Amy and Gary want it.
This thirty-five-acre farm exudes charm from the moment you drive through the gate. There are old barrels for sale to greet you outside and candles to light your way into the tasting room.
The tasting room boasts several wall taps offering fresh hard ciders with names like Barrel of Moneys, French Kiss, Forgotten Fruit and Bee Happy. The apple varieties they are made from number twenty-five and counting. Some are so rare, that you are unlikely to see these varieties outside of France or Manoff Market Cidery.
What gives these ciders their distinctive taste, in addition to the apples, are the barrels they are aged in. All of these barrels have had adventurous prior lives; whether they’ve aged French Cognac or Pennsylvania whiskey, the barrel aging process yields a complex taste.
I tried several of the ciders. My personal favorite was Barrel of Monkeys, with its rich caramel flavor, aged for a year in a Muscatel Setúbal (a Portuguese dessert wine) barrel. If you are a lightweight like me, you may want to have something to eat while sampling ciders. Manoff Market Cidery invites you to bring your own food, set up a picnic or order food ahead of time on their website from a local restaurant with an on-site pop-up. Your hardest decision will be where on the farm to plant your boots, because there are so many inviting options.
It isn’t just a cidery, either. They also have a market that sells their famous peaches, apples, pears, nectarines, blackberries and blueberries – depending on the season. Manoff Market also sells everything from pottery to olive oil.
This is a family business and you can feel the multi-generational love as soon as you walk through the door. On our visit, we were greeted by Amy and her granddaughter, who definitely got the cool boots memo. I will be sure to wear mine, next time we go.
Before heading to Manoff Market Cidery, check their website calender of events to find out which Thursdays are Cider Nights. This might just be New Hope’s best kept secret, west of Main Street. The buzz about Manoff Market Cidery is for sure about to pour over.
