Plan a Cozy Cider-Centered Getaway in the Catskills

If you’re the kind of person who looks forward to a day trip spent picking apples each fall, there’s a little hamlet tucked away on the western border of New York where you can have an even more robust seasonal apple experience. 

On the banks of the Delaware River in the Catskills, you’ll find Callicoon, New York. The very small town is easy to miss if you don’t have a reason to stop, but there’s a culinary destination hiding out here that makes it worth staying for a night or two: Seminary Hill Orchard & Cidery. 

Chicagoans Doug Doetsch and Susan Manning founded Seminary Hill to give back to the community that Doetsch grew up in. This impressive campus features a cidery and large restaurant perched on top of a picturesque hill, so you can peer out of the dining room’s giant glass windows at the organic apple orchards that are growing all across the slope below. Peeping up behind all those apple trees is the top of a stone tower, part of a former seminary that the hill and cidery are named after.

Doetsch and Manning built Seminary Hill — which is also the first passive house-certified alcohol production facility in the United States, a designation that lauds extreme energy efficiency — from the ground up. Its orchards are still fairly young, with the first batch of trees planted in 2014, but the bottles of crisp, dry cider coming from this relatively new producer show the level of care and skill that go into each bottle. 

To properly enjoy the views at this small-town cidery, snagging a table at its restaurant is imperative. Try to book one during sunset so you can watch the sky’s colors change through the eatery’s large windows while overlooking the orchard.

The menu at Seminary Hill’s on-site restaurant, The Tasting Room, changes seasonally, a flexibility that allows executive chef Jack Tippet to highlight ingredients at their peak. Dishes are simple and well-executed.

If you’re in search of an excellent roast chicken, this is the place to get it, although the wild mushrooms served alongside the poultry might just steal the show. The fried chicken skins with buttermilk and hot sauce for dunking are practically a mandatory start to your meal, and brunch at The Tasting Room is worth booking — be sure to snag an order of the biscuits and jam.

You can enjoy cider by the glass (or even a tasting flight) alongside your meal, and the drier flavor profiles that Seminary Hill focuses on in its bottlings pair well with food. However, if you’re making a weekend trip to Callicoon, a tour and tasting at the cidery is likely to be the highlight of your vacation.

As you walk through the rows of young apple trees growing just downslope from the restaurant and the primary cidery production facility, you’ll learn about the more than 60 apple varieties (and even pears) that Seminary Hill experiments with and blends together to create its bottles of crisp, small-batch cider. If you visit in the warmer months, you’ll spot butterflies and bees as they buzz through the orchards, natural pollinators that are crucial to the next crop’s success.

After a stroll through the rows of apple trees, take a peek at where the cider is made in an energy-efficient space directly below the restaurant. Vats of fermenting cider have handwritten labels detailing the combinations of apples inside that will help determine the final drink’s flavor. 

Each tour is followed by a guided tasting of the available ciders produced by Seminary Hill. Most of the options here are on the less-sweet side, but if you’re looking for something with a little bit more sugar, there is a range in the Seminary Hill cider selection. Offerings may change depending on when you visit; the cider is produced in small batches, after all, and some bottlings are more experimental. 

My favorite was the Cackling Hen 2022, a semi-dry cider made with 62% Golden Russet apples in addition to a blend of Newton Pippin, Wickson, and Northern Spy fruits. The notes of citrus, passion fruit, and mango with a bright, acidic palate in this cider make it the kind of tart, refreshing drink I’d enjoy year-round — which is proof that it doesn’t need to be fall to visit Seminary Hill.

When you drive out to Callicoon to enjoy your cider-fueled weekend, this community-minded cidery — which offers seasonal events including cooking classes and live music — has the perfect place for you to stay just down the road. Seminary Hill’s Boarding House is a peaceful, elegant property that emulates exactly what its name implies: the ambience of a historic boarding house.

The Boarding House isn’t the kind of place where you’ll be waited on hand and foot — it’s largely a self-serve operation, complete with a vintage-style kitchen where you can cook your own meals — it’s a beautiful, relaxing space that made it easy for me to unwind. The best way to decompress while there is enjoying a bottle of cider with a friend on the Boarding House’s front porch after a day of learning all about how it was made.