A self-described beer man, Alan Shapiro had his cider "wow moment” on a beautiful spring day in Suffolk, England, in 2003. He was staying at a mansion surrounded by a moat on an apple orchard estate. "It was like a light bulb went on over my head," he grinned. "It reminded me of when I had my first good beer, and I realized very quickly I had stumbled upon something."

Since Shapiro’s epiphany, hard cider, the fermented juice of apples, has taken the nation by storm. Take a look next time you’re at the grocery store or a pub. You’ll find a selection of cider offerings that simply wasn’t there 10 years ago. In the last three years alone, the volume of hard cider produced in the United States has nearly tripled, as tracked by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

With a nearly 30-year history in the adult beverage industry, Shapiro is the mastermind of the Cider Summit, a series of cider festivals he started with four other partners in Seattle in 2010. What started with 400 attendees is bursting at the seams five years later with nearly 4000 cider enthusiasts. His newer summits in Portland, San Francisco and Chicago attract similar crowds.

It’s not surprising that craft cider is taking root in a region of wine and craft beer enthusiasts. Washington is the second largest wine producer and has the second highest number of craft breweries in the country. But when it comes to cider, Washington is out front with 30-plus cideries, more than any other state in the country.

Shapiro, a cider guru, agreed to share his insights about the fastest growing sector in the alcohol industry. We met at Schilling Cider House, a cider bar that opened last September in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood.

A taste for the bitter and sweet

Although plenty of delicious hard ciders are made from familiar eating apples such as galas, honeycrisps and granny smiths, these so-called dessert apples can’t compete with the range of flavors that cider apples provide.

Cider apples are categorized as sweets, sharps, bittersweets and bittersharps, according to their levels of acidity, which confers sourness, and tannins, which contribute bitter flavors. To make truly authentic hard ciders, cider makers often seek out heirloom varieties such as Kingston Blacks, Cap of Liberty and Harrisons, an American heritage apple.