Join us at the TENTH Annual NW Cider Cup Awards Party!
Thursday, June 15, 6-9PM @ Polaris Hall in Portland
Join us for an evening celebrating the winners of the 2023 Northwest Cider Cup! The Northwest Cider Cup Awards Party is an annual celebration of the best ciders in the Pacific Northwest region in over 15 categories. Winning ciders are announced during our awards ceremony, where more than 200 cider industry professionals and cider enthusiasts gather for a celebratory evening.
Each year at the Awards Party, in addition to honoring the best ciders, we also recognize the best in other categories, including Best of Show, Best New Cidery, Best Cidery of the Year (Small, Medium, Large), Best Dressed, and more.
Hors d'oeuvres will be served and a selection of winning ciders will be available for purchase. PLUS, every Awards Party Guest gets a FREE glass of an award winning cider! Celebrate the PNW cider community in style... dress-to-impress encouraged!
Review the 2023 NW Cider Cup Categories Accepted
Entries closed May 15, 2023
The Northwest Cider Cider Cup (formerly Portland International Cider Cup or PICC), a prestigious competition managed by the Northwest Cider Association (NWCA), is open to cideries across the Pacific Northwest and is the strictest cider competition in the United States.
NWCC was started in 2012 by four Washington and Oregon cidermakers and named after the city where they decided to host the competition.
It wa
s started because those 4 cidermakers felt other competitions were designed for marketing and participation awards rather than seeking quality samples.
The purpose for starting the NWCC was two fold. First, to give blind, professional opinions to commercial cidermakers in the Pacific Northwest. Cidermakers rely on the NWCC for critical peer review whether or not their cider wins an award. Judges keep extensive notes that are provided to the cidermakers after the competition (notes on flaws, imbalances, highlights, tasting notes, etc). There is nowhere else craft cidermakers can get feedback / market research like this. Second, founders of the NWCC sought to keep “flawed” ciders out of the marketplace. Buyers and consumers tend to know when the bottle of wine they just opened is corked and it does not affect their willingness to buy more wine. However, cider is such a new category, buyers and consumers do not generally have the experience to know what is “flawed.” If they taste a flawed cider it affects future purchases and perceptions of the whole cider category, not just that one brand or vintage of cider. In the Northwest we see most flawed cider that makes it to market was fermented by a new cidery so the NWCC incentivizes new cideries (with a $500 cash prize) to participate and get feedback.
NWCC has evolved as the cider industry has matured and has been managed by the NWCA since
2012. Now, going into our 10th year, the Northwest Cider Cup has become known within the industry as the premiere competition for picking quality ciders rather than a participation award for marketing purposes.In the past decade, the NWCA has facilitated industry to develop standards for each cider category (styles such as Low Tannin, High Tannin, Single Varietal, Botanical, Fruit, and more) and then trained upwards of 1000 buyers, influencers and industry professionals to understand what makes a great cider in each category. Ciders are judged by trained industry experts looking for both flaws and dimensions of quality (such as aroma, color, taste, etc.) for different cider styles.
The competition is strict and not all categories take medals if judges determine the quality is not present. NWCC is internationally renowned for distinguishing cider categories as well as educating judges with a consistent lexicon for describing craft cider characteristics. For these reasons, the NWCC award designation has earned a reputation as being a mark of distinction for selecting the best quality ciders.