Standing up for Oregon's cideries (and more than a few jobs)

Oregon is world-famous for the hundreds of small craft breweries, cideries, and wineries in our state. In addition to making great beer, cider, and wine, these industries support nearly 50,000 Oregon jobs.

But when cideries told Senator Wyden that certain hard ciders would get taxed much higher than other hard ciders, he listened to local cideries and orchardists -- and stood up for Oregon's small businesses.

Here's the deal: Yeast does the work of turning sugar into alcohol -- but the fermentation process is unpredictable.

And, according to the Portland Business Journal, "under the old rules, ciders that were too high in alcohol content or past a certain level of carbonation would be taxed at a rate as much as 15 times higher than normal."

And when taxes spike like that, costs for cideries -- and prices for cider lovers -- are unpredictable.

Senator Wyden took action, leading the way and passing the CIDER Act:

Cideries no longer have to risk being taxed at a higher rate when fermentation takes an unexpected turn.

"When I joined the NW Cider Association I was the 11th member. Now there are 72,” said Reverend Nat's owner Nat West. “This kind of legislation is obviously really important for me as a producer, but it’s even more important for consumers as it let’s them have the cider that they want to drink, not just the ciders that make the best tax sense.”

Oregon cideries can continue to experiment and make the best hard cider they can. Cider lovers can enjoy the fruits of their labor. And Oregon's fruit producers will continue to find strong markets for their fruit.

And everyone wins.