Growing Your Own Cider

Growing Your Own Cider. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The cider industry is making huge strides here in the northwest and many of the new cideries are also into growing their own apples for the cider. Lars Ringsrud with Snowdrift Cider in Wenatchee, the heart of apple country, says that cider apples are a different animal.

RINGSRUD: The vast, vast majority of apple production is for the commercial market and especially if any orchardists are efficient at it or making any money at it they’ve got hundreds and hundreds, thousands of acres. Cider apples: you find sections a few trees at a time or a couple acres at a time so percentage wise there’s almost no comparison. But flavor and personality-wise there’s a drastic comparison. Since we’re small orchardists we have been able to take a bit of a gamble and convert some of our trees. We’ve got a couple of acres producing right now.

Making cider is as complex as making a fine wine or craft beer with multiple layers of flavors.

RINGSRUD: We have 40 plus varieties now. We thought we knew apples going into this but we’ve been absolutely wowed by the vast varieties of flavors, shapes, behaviors, appearances and it’s been really eye-opening, really exciting for us.

Ringsrud and Snowdrift have been using a unique red-fleshed apple to make a wonderful cider.

RINGSRUD: It’s a brand new experience for us. It’s very unique. There are only tow or three producers that I know of that are making this type of cider. There are several red-fleshed varieties out there. Most of them are in the heirloom or kind of off the market areas and even within them there’s a wide variety of flavors.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.