More than 1,100 people gathered in Portland, Oregon, this week for the 14th annual CiderCon, hosted by the American Cider Association (ACA).
Registration for the event was up +20% versus the 2023 convention in Chicago, blowing registration records “out of the water,” ACA president and CEO Michelle McGrath shared during her opening remarks Thursday.
The theme for this week’s conference is “Connecting to Consumers in an Age of Endless Choice.”
“Business is tough right now and it’s especially difficult for beverage companies,” McGrath said. “And it’s even more difficult for cider companies, where our premium ingredients are expensive, and the regulatory parity is severely lacking.”
McGrath also acknowledged the “added challenges of being an agricultural-based beverage,” noting that in the Northeast, freezing temperatures caused some orchards to have no yields.
“There were zero apples from some of the orchards in the Northeast. Zero,” McGrath said. “We all have ups and downs in our yields, but zero is a really hard thing to handle.”
McGrath also announced the winner of the ACA board’s 2024 Apple Advocate Award. The award was presented to U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenaur (D-OR 3rd district). Blumenauer, a Portland-native, has represented Oregon’s third congressional district since 1996, and in 2015 co-sponsored the Cider Industry Deserves Equal Regulation Act (CIDER Act), which widened the definition of hard cider to include ciders made with pears (a.k.a. perries), expanded the limits on ABV from 7% to 8.5%, and increased the maximum carbonation level for hard ciders and perries before higher tax rates are imposed.
The ACA and other hard cider advocates are still fighting for additional allowances for the latter, as the CIDER Act did not include all ciders and other fruit fermented beverages, requiring many cideries to produce lower-carbonated products to avoid the “bubble tax.” In his pre-recorded acceptance speech, Blumenauer announced the introduction of the Bubble Tax Modernization Act of 2024, which seeks to eliminate heightened tax rates on all cider, wine and mead under 8.5% ABV. Blumenauer has co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Mike Kelly (PA-R).
The existing tax rate for low-ABV carbonated fruit wine, cider and mead is $3.30 or $3.40 per gallon, while low-ABV carbonated grape wines are taxed at $1.07 per gallon. The proposed legislation would raise the maximum carbon dioxide allowance for fruit beverages from 0.39 milligrams per 100 milliliters, to 0.64 milligrams, allowing all fruit-based bev-alc below that maximum to be taxed at $1.07 per gallon.
The bubble tax is just one of several legislation fights the ACA is focused on in 2024. In Oregon, members are also pushing back against higher bev-alc tax rates. Two recent proposals to raise taxes on beer and cider failed to pass: a nearly 3,000% increase from $2.60 per barrel to $72.60 per barrel, proposed in 2021 (H.B. 3296); and a 1,200% increase, to $33.60 per barrel, proposed in 2023 (H.B. 3312).
Rep. Tawna Sanchez (D-Portland), who introduced both bills, is now the chair of Oregon’s new Alcohol Pricing and Addiction Services task force, which is in charge of studying several aspects of the state’s bev-alc industry, including the “benefits and drawbacks of imposing taxes on beer and wine,” according to the state’s website. The task force held its first meeting last week.