Husband of Hort Station director Rothwell opens Tandem Ciders.

TandemCider1: TANDEM CIDERS proprietor Dan Young (above) offers a variety of hard ciders as well as fresh apple cider at his tasting room and cidery in Suttons Bay Township.

While the proprietor of a microbrewery in Greenfield, Mass., called "The People's Pint," Dan Young began noticing a bright young woman who would occasionally stop by his place with friends on weekends to hoist a mug or two of his specialty beer.

Her name was Nikki Rothwell, and she was a Ph. D. candidate studying entymology at the nearby University of Massachusetts.

“She was just such a Michigander,” Young said.  “You could hear it in her voice – the accent, the long o’s and everything.  She’d earned her master’s degree at Michigan State; and I expected that she’d wind up back in Michigan eventually.”

But not before Rothwell herself began taking notice of Young – and decided that he was someone who might be worth getting to know a little better.  The pair began hanging out with each other, and enjoyed going on long bike rides together through the Massachusetts countryside.  Fermentation tanks are located in the basement of the facility (above).

In fact, they began riding together so much that a mutual friend loaned them a tandem bicycle.  They ended up vacationing in England, and brought the tandem bike with them.

“We spent a month touring England on that bike,” Young said.  “Naturally, one of the things I was interested in was visiting some pubs and talking to some other brewers.”

One of the things Young discovered on that trip – other than the fact that he was falling deeply in love with Rothwell –  was that hard apple cider was “right up there with ale” in terms of popularity at local pubs in England.

“There are cideries everywhere in England,” Young said, “and that fact really stuck with me.”

So did Rothwell.  Or, rather, Young stuck with Rothwell when she headed back to Michigan in 2003 – bringing little more than a subcompact car loaded down with a couple of cats, some houseplants and six kegs of beer.

“We were married at my parents’ house on the farm I grew up on near Kingsley,” Rothwell said.  “That was Labor Day weekend 2004 – and on the next Tuesday, I started my new job.

“I actually spent my honeymoon at the Hort Station,” Rothwell lamented.

Rothwell, 36 – who is already well known to most local farmers as well as readers of this newspaper – is the director of Michigan State University’s Northwest Michigan Horticultural Research Station in Bingham Township.

“It was clear that Nikki had a great job and was going to be working at the Hort Station for many years,” said Young, 44.

“It was also obvious that I would be spending the rest of my life in Michigan – and I needed a job,” Young added.

Young’s voice today bears little trace of his East Coast upbringing.  He attributes his “neutral” accent to a stint in the Navy when shipmates teased him mercilessly about his accent – years before he met Rothwell.

The name on the front of the building on Setterbo Road is reflected by the tandem bicycle that he and his business partner, Nikki Rothwell, rode around England. Rothwell is Young’s wife, is director of the NW Michigan Horticultural Research Station.

Becoming a Michigander himself, Young worked for a while making Leelanau Cheese at Black Star Farm in Bingham Township.  It wasn’t until his wife’s job exposed him to a Michigan State University seminar on the hard cider industry in Michigan that the proverbial lightbulb appeared above his head.

“I already had the skills and experience as a brewer,” Young said.  “I’d also come to appreciate the idea of making products from things that are grown locally.”

Many of the hops and other ingredients used in brewing beer are produced out west, he explained, and creating a fine beer depends almost entirely on the recipe you use.

“It’s completely different with ciders, though,” Young said. “Like wine, cider depends on the characteristics of the land and the fruit itself – and a lot of our neighbors are growing some fine apples.”

Young knew exactly where and how to get a good deal on some used fermentation tanks – and how to operate them along with bottling equipment and other tools of the trade.

In 2006, he formed a corporation, Tandem Ciders.  Last year, Rothwell and Young received site plan approval from Suttons Bay Township to construct a barn-like commercial structure for a “cidery” plus an okay from the Michigan Liquor Control Commission for a license to operate a “small winery.”

Officially, Tandem Ciders opened for business this month.  The front of the building on Setterbo Road is marked only with a tandem bicycle mounted above the door.

A tasting room occupying the front portion of the building is reminiscent of – no big surprise – a brew pub.  Hard cider is available on tap and in bottles. The hard varieties currently available include a dry cider known as “Farmhouse” and a sweeter product known as “Bee’s Dream.” 

Tandem Cider’s unpasteurized fresh apple cider was so fresh last week that it could only be obtained at the cidery and at a few local farm markets.

Wearing a Schlitz beer apron over a Tandem Ciders T-shirt, Young said the family business is just now getting off the ground.

“It’s a perfect fit for me – and for Nikki,” Young said.