There's always one sad cider on the bar menu, what seems like a consolation for the non-beer drinker, like here, have some juice. You've probably seen it on tap at a bar, most likely a mass produced, from-concentrate, lip-smacking sweet cider. These ciders might be backed by some of the biggest beer-makers in the country, but these companies aren’t necessarily the bad guys. “We need the big guys in our market right now, because they have the advertising dollars,” explained Mattie Beason, owner of Black Twig Cider House in Durham, North Carolina. "Any way we can get people drinking cider is a good way, as long as they come away from that experience wanting more."

It's all about exposure, and that's where the big cider makers can lend a hand. At first, hard cider isn't far from the stuff that your mom bought in half gallon jugs at the roadside farmers stand, alongside a batch of sugar-coated doughnuts. But then someone shatters that childhood association with the funky, fruity, dry ciders that are making their ways into bars and restaurants, and the world of cider opens up before them.

It’s a drink that has all the complexity of wine with the thirst-quenching drinkability of beer. Cider doesn't have the foothold that craft beer is getting in the country just yet, but American cider makers have more than hit their stride. Here are 10 incredible ciders, both new and established, that will take you to school and shake the foundations of what you thought cider was.

Burlington, VT

This cider, a blend of Vermont apples fermented on blueberries, drinks like a rosé, slightly acidic and effervescent with tame berry flavor (achieved by using the whole blueberry, instead of just the juice), unlike that aggressively berry-flavored gum you chewed in sixth grade. Cider can be whatever it wants to be when it grows up. Even rosé.

Fenneville, MI

You like a little bit of funk or barnyard-y smell to your cider? This one brings it. If you have an Aunt Chloé that lives on a farm in Provence, this is what you bring to share with the roast chicken and greens from her backyard garden.

Barnard, VT

Traveling hundreds of miles and searching through liquor store in Vermont to find a bottle or two of Fable Farm cider is worth it. Ciders from this sustainable farm—like the Greensboro Apple Pet Nat—are made in very limited quantities and fermented in oak barrels, giving the natural ciders a softer carbonation and apple flavor surrounded by a musty barnyard funk. They leave you feeling like you’ve stepped out of your crowded apartment and into a breezy lazy Vermont countryside.