Atlanta’s First Cidery Brews, Serves Up Local Flavors

After countless hours learning about, making and perfecting the drink, the Resuta family finally has a way to take their passion project to the masses. Urban Tree Cidery is in West Midtown, an industrial area of Atlanta that consists of several neighborhoods. Their building at 1465 Howell Mill Road reflects the area’s past.

“[The building] was built in 1968, it was primarily used for wholesale manufacturing,” Maria Resuta explains. The two-story brick warehouse has a number of neighbors that still serve an industrial purpose.

In some ways Urban Tree Cidery does too. In addition to a tasting room and bar, large carbonation and fermentation tanks, aging barrels and chambers fill the back of the cidery where Tim Resuta makes the cider.

Unlike breweries, Urban Tree Cidery can both make and sell its product directly to consumers at the same location, all the while bypassing the need for a distributor. That’s because of Georgia’s Farm Winery law, which was passed to bolster the state’s budding wine industry in the early 1980s.

Tim Resuta says when their lawyer found out they had an orchard, “he was happier than we were at the time.” That’s because the Farm Winery law allows producers to sell their product direct to consumers if they are also growing a portion of the fruit going into their drink.

Not only can Urban Tree Cidery sell their own cider to consumers, they obtained a liquor license that has enabled them to have a full bar. Serving local beer, spirits, and bitters, Urban Tree has made a number of cider-based cocktails named after Atlanta neighborhoods.

And being the first cidery in the city does not mean Tim Resuta wants it to be the only one.

“Cider is a very small community that needs to support each other, for growth and to raise public awareness,” he says.

Hours and more information about their ciders can be found at their website.