Though most customers know Sowams Cider Works Co. through its Warren tasting room, or by the bottle at several Rhode Island liquor stores, the business is “first and foremost a farming operation,” said owner Spencer Morris.
“Probably the most important thing I stress when people come into the cidery is that this is all made from local fruit,” said Morris, who has an orchard in the Touisset section of town and a tasting room just off Main Street.
“In order for me to be successful in producing the finished product ... I have to have control over the apples that I plant – the way they’re grown, and the way they’re harvested,” he said. “Ultimately, we’re farmers first – or at least, I am.”
Morris’ process is more like winemaking than brewing beer, he says – one factor that sets Sowams apart from most hard cider companies, which typically market the beverage as a beer alternative.
Unlike many of those ciders, “our products are not sweet, they’re not generally effervescent and they’re not overtly apple [tasting],” Morris said. “They’re more floral in character, and like a dry white wine.”
Accordingly, Sowams ciders are served in wine glasses at the tasting room and come in bottles at the liquor store. But the wine similarities start well before the cider reaches a vessel.
“In the wine business, you have specific [grape] varietals that are grown for making wine, and they’re not really like table grapes,” Morris said. “They tend to be quite a bit more acidic ... and the same is true in the apple world.”
That means Morris grows a lot of “oddball apples,” he said – varieties that customers won’t find in today’s grocery stores but that their grandparents might remember.
Take the Rhode Island Greening, for example – the Ocean State’s official apple, though most residents aren’t familiar with it, Morris says. But it was a key ingredient in his grandmother’s favorite apple pie recipe, and it makes a great cider as well.
Morris also traces his interest in growing apples back to his grandmother, who grew the crop in the Hudson Valley. His mother also followed in these footsteps and still operates a small pick-your-own apple orchard in the region.
But it’s a challenge to subsist on small-scale apple farming alone, Morris says, and part of his interest in cidermaking arose from an effort to continue the family tradition in a financially sustainable manner.
Sowams produces up to 35 different ciders per year, with four on rotation in the tasting room at a time. The business also sells through three Rhode Island liquor stores and is on the menu at a couple of restaurants.
Morris hopes to expand these sales avenues going forward and to contribute to Warren’s culinary destination profile, while also “brandishing the Rhode Island flag” at national cidermaking events, he said.
Another vital aspect of the business – and perhaps the most satisfying for Morris – is sharing the craft of cidermaking with the public. Though wildly popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, cider waned in popularity before making a comeback in the U.S. in recent decades.
“The contemporary American cider movement is a process of rediscovery, if you will,” Morris said, “and it’s a fun and exciting place to be. ... We’re a very small part of the beverage industry, and that’s a process of consumer education, which is probably the most important thing we do in our tasting room.”
OWNER: Spencer Morris
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Apple farming and cider production
LOCATION: 98 Child St., Warren
EMPLOYEES: Three
YEAR FOUNDED: 2010
ANNUAL REVENUE: WND
