Cider Coast to Coast

Cider in the United States is having an explosive moment. Bolstered by a new generation of growers in California and New York, plus a thirsty generation of millennials, it is the fastest growing among all alcoholic beverage categories. In this episode we meet the makers and protagonists of this emergent movement.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome back to Point of Origin, the podcast about the
world of food from around the world. I'm your host,
Steven Saderfield. Today's episode, Cider Coast features a very good
friend of mine, Megan Larmer, who is the director of
Regional Food at the Glenwood Center for Regional Foods and Farming.

(00:33):
She holds an anthropology degree from the University of London,
where her research focused on seed exchange, first generation women
farmers in food heritage. Megan continues her social science research
on food and farming as a PhD student at the
University of Exeter's Center for Rural Policy Research. She has

(00:55):
a broad range of experience in food and agriculture, including
ten years as a restaurant professional running one of the
Midwest largest and most successful farmers markets, and an apprenticeship
at Bread and Puppet Theater farm. Megan, thank you so

(01:20):
much for joining us on Point of Origin. It's leisure
to be here, Stephen, thanks for having me. I have
had emerging love affair with cider from my time in
California in the Bay Area, getting to meet the makers
and also taste the fruits of their labor literally and
some wonderful ciders from Sebastopol, but on the other side

(01:42):
of the country in the Hudson Valley. I was not
aware of how epic and prolific the cider community was
until I met you. I'd love to know how you
got involved, or maybe how Glennwood got involved so directly
an explicitly and wanting to support the cider community in

(02:03):
the area. So the work around cider predates my time
at Glenwood, and I was actually got into it by
a former colleague of mine, Sarah Grady, who nearly ten
years ago, was looking for inspiration in fulfill england Wood
mission to support a regional food system and looking for
that inspiration to other parts of the world that had

(02:26):
a strong sense of regionality in their their food and
really tied that food to an agricultural space, into cultural
resilience in rural communities. And she was inspired by Normandy
in France, a region that has pretty similar landscape to
the Hudson Valley, and saw that there was, you know,
a strong cider making community there and wondered, why was

(02:48):
the historic apple orchards here in the Hudson Valley, I mean,
New York is the big Apple of apples states, Why
there was not this tradition of cider making in our
own region. She hunted down the small handful of forward
thinking apple growers and beveridge makers who were working insider,
and they didn't exchange with the makers there in France.

(03:11):
Coming back from that, we're hugely inspired to recreate some
of what they've seen in France, while also recognizing that
America is a very different place. In New York in
the Hudson Valley are a very different place. And so
I had worked to engage with the trade and start
to build this category of cider, which was pretty much

(03:31):
unknown at that point in the US. You know, there
is certainly the history of apples and colonial settlement that
is strong in in the Northeast. To all the legends
around Johnny Apple feeds. The Lord is good to me,
and so I thankful Lar for given me the things
I need. The sun Menrain I don't know, and others

(03:58):
who planted these seedling apples not only as a means
of subsistence survival to have something safe to drink, but
also as a means of claiming land and clearing the
land that was by all rights occupied by the indigenous
peoples of this country. So there's some complicated history in that.
So the Hudson Valley was a huge apple producer actually

(04:19):
was shipping apples to England in the colonial period, well
known and we love for the ambaging apples that were
produced here and that seedling world, which for folks who
don't know, apples that produced from seedlings will produce highly
variable fruits. So these are basically new apples. If you
want the same apple, you have to do that through
through grafting and more of a cloning process to these

(04:39):
seedlings were being grown, like the Newtown Pippin is one
of our most beloved varieties of apples from Newtown, New York.
What is what is now part of Queens and these
apples are gaining a lot of fame now. At the
same time, cider was considered really a pretty rough country
drink was used in in presidential campaigns to sort of

(05:01):
smear candidates to say, you know, they just drank left
cider while we should be drinking champagne. In the White House.
The Whig Party, predecessor to the Republicans, decided to nominate
as their candidate William Henry Harrison, a military hero. Although
he was raised in a rather aristocratic Virginia family, Harrison

(05:22):
supporters managed to recast their man as the log cabin
and hard cider candidate. Out on the campaign trail, Harrison
would swig hard cider during his stump speeches, and his
supporters would sing songs to tobacco and punctuate the choruses
by spitting. There was a lot of ideation around cider

(05:45):
as being a rural, rustick and particularly of our landscape
kind of drink, while the aspirations of the upper class
in the US were looking towards Europe and moving into
the guilded age, with these ideas of you know, all
things worth having are coming from the continent rather than
coming from our own soils here. During Prohibition, cider really

(06:05):
did not survive well. It was much easier to make
distilled spirits on the slive and it was to make cider.
So a lot of the love of those American varietals
that were specifically for cider making, or crab apples or
the mini seedlings that you know are called spitters. They're
not nice to eat, but add incredible qualities to cider.
Those were visit of went by the wayside, and the

(06:26):
revival of that practice really has only been in the
last the last couple of decades on any kind of
commercial scale. And what I always is interesting to think
about is there was not really ever a commercial industry
for cider. So while the cider of today is using
apples that were discovered, if you will, centuries before ours
or being brought over from Europe the same way you

(06:48):
would for wine grapes because they have known value as
cider apples, the industry of commercial cider sale is something
entirely new in the United States, and a lot of
that is thanks to some of the pioneers here in
the northeastern New York. That is such an excellent point
this industry as you're describing. Obviously, you can't talk about
cider without talking about apples, and yet cider as a

(07:13):
beverage in the consciousness of especially like millennial drinkers, is
a new thing, and I myself, as a late millennial drinker,
feel that I see cider more and more in restaurants
and bars than ever, with variable quality, but it seems
as though the presence is higher than it's been since

(07:35):
I can remember. Part of the interesting thing about working
in cider right now is that it is like a
new entrant into our thinking about drinks categories. There's a
lot of internal grappling within the cider community about how
we define that category because we are working with in
many ways more sophisticated drinkers, because the education of a

(08:00):
Aerican drinkers around wine has given them some vocabulary to
talk about cider, but so to the crafts beer explosion
has given some vocabulary to talk about cider. And we're
really trying to find a way to define cider as
itself rather than as an allegory or a substitute or
a novelty drink for when you aren't drinking wine or beer.

(08:23):
It's really interesting to look at and we have that
kind of diversity, certainly within the Hudson Valley. We have
producers like Metal House and like Hudson Valley Farmhouse siders
that are being produced no more or less estate cider's
bottle condition have really interesting different kinds of notes, very
dry ciders to a wonderful producer called nine Pin Cider

(08:43):
in Albany that is producing really great, really like easy drinking,
casual times cider and it is a huge hit across
the bars of Albany. Engs between cans of cider too,
seven fifty four matt two magnums. If you're drinking almost anywhere,
you're more likely be more cider than you were previously.
And part of the question is how do we create

(09:05):
an identity for what cider is is as inclusive as
possible and still carves out that unique space for it.
That leads me to my next question, which is how
does one go about the business of defining a drinking culture. Yeah, well,
for re personally and certainly for Glenwood, are focus is

(09:27):
that this is an agricultural product. So we got into
the cider space because we wanted to see the orchards
that have been here, in the orchards that could be
here have an opportunity to thrive in the space of
tremendous pressures for real estate development as well as all
of the other pressures that go alongside being a farmer
and the unique pressures of being an orchard that you know,

(09:49):
you make an investment in these trees and it could
be seven ten years before you're seeing harvests that can
can really justify that investment. So we have a strong,
strong interest and define cider is a truly agricultural product
and really centering the apple as the key element of ciders,
that if you are working with lower quality apple, then

(10:12):
I I don't think it's possible to make a really
nice cider, and I think that we have plenty of
examples of that and other fermented drinks. So to me,
like the defining thing, ciders are made from apples, and
that sounds really basic, but there's plenty of market research
to show that that's not a commonly understood concept in

(10:34):
the general public, and there's been plenty of efforts to
obfuscate that, and in some ways a lining cider with
beer does some of that obfuscating. So a lot of
the education we do is, you know, this is a
product made from fruit, made from the juice of this fruit.
Fermented juice is what cider is, and what that fruit
is really matters to the quality of it. So that's
part of the education we try to do. Beyond that,

(10:55):
building a culture around a drink is slower and in
some ways even more fun than just the education marketing part,
because it means giving people that personal experience of seeing
what the landscape is that the cider is coming from,
seeing the faces and the people and the stories and
the families and communities that are making that cider and

(11:18):
giving giving them a chance to really experience it sort
of as their own. So to that end, Glennwood founded
Cider Week in New York City, which it has now
evolved into cyder Rick Hudson Valley, a cyder Rican, the
Finger Lakes, and the Cider Rican Western New York, all
of which are now organized and led by the New
York Cider Association, which is a statewide trade association that

(11:39):
that Glenwood founded as well and is now operating independently
to really serve the growers and makers of the state.
I remember one story in particular of a I think
it was a bunch of condos that we're going to
be built over some really old apple orchards. But you all, obviously,

(11:59):
with the support of the local farmers, were able to
band together and save the orchards. Can you talk about
that story where that was happening and how that came
to be. Yeah, So that's on a farm just up
up the road from us here in Hopewell Junction. It's
called Fishkill Farms. The farmer there, Josh Morgan fow Is,

(12:19):
you know, in his early thirties, came back to farming
after going to art school. He saw the land that
his grandfather had carefully tended being portioned off to real
estate development too, condos, And you know, this speaks to
the fact that the Hudson Valley in general, making a
living here as a farmer has historically always been incredibly difficult,

(12:41):
but particularly with the growth of the city and the
outmigration of folks who wanted to be living on one
acre properties rather than the fifteen twenty several hundred acre
farms that were here, saw that land being portioned out
and sold off and really came back to the land
with a strong desire to keep it whole. So fishkill

(13:02):
farms is as you pick farm. That's been one of
the really key innovations and strategies in keeping fruit farms
going in the Hudson Valley, so opening up to a
sort of agro tourism world. But when he saw that
the land that was no longer no longer part of
their family farm was about to be sold off for condos,
and that orchard land torn up, those trees torn up,

(13:25):
we helped to coordinate with him and with land Trust
here in the Hudson Valley to preserve that land for
agricultural usage, and they have since that been putting in
more and more cider varietals, opening up that land to
cider production. Josh is a really wonderful innovative thinker. He
has put a cider works on site, He's opened a

(13:46):
cider bar to add to the agri tourism aspects, and
they're also growing diversified vegetables and just doing a beautiful
job of really activating that space as an agricultural space
that is both productive and it's helping to tell the
story to a wider audience of the importance of those spaces. Brilliant.
You really nailed it with kind of what's required on
the end of the farmer, for better for worse in

(14:08):
terms of economic viability and sustainability. But I am particularly
interested when programs or food and beverages can recenter thinking
and conversations around agriculture because that disconnect is really so
vast for many consumers that I'm just really grateful for

(14:31):
your work. And if we wanted to drink some ciders,
I know that you don't want to exclude anyone um
from the Hudson Valley. I wouldn't ask you to do that.
But maybe give us some uh some notable ones for
their character, for their story. Sure well. So one of
the really cool things that is happening now is that

(14:52):
more and more cideries up here are opening tasting rooms
in the Hudson Valley, and I think that is just
such a wonderful used to bring out into the landscape
and also to try a bunch of different fighters. I
had to name some of my favorite tasting rooms to
taste cider in. Certainly Fishkill Farms and their Treasury Cider
and their ciders are really nice and each has a

(15:13):
particular history to that place and the fruit that they're producing.
I'd also definitely recommend Orchard Hill Ciders again multi generational
family farm on Stons Farm and the orchard and Jeff Suns,
the current orchard iss too there, has a deep love
for architecture and has built an absolutely beautiful tasting room
that draws on the architecture of other historic cider regions.

(15:37):
If you're in the city, step into Gramercy Tavern. They
have an un paralleled cider lists on their their drinks
menu buy the glass. You can really walk through some
of the greatest ciders being produced in the state. With
really knowledgeable staff, so I'd recommend albows and yeah, if
you're looking for a more casual time, Brooklyn Cider House
has a great spot in Brooklyn to enjoy enjoy their site,

(16:00):
DS and some barbecues and music. So, Megan, I appreciate
you swinging by today to talk to us about cider
and joining us on point of origin. Thank you, Stephen,
have a great day. Thanks you too. That was Megan Larmer,
the director of Regional Foods at the Glenwood Center for

(16:20):
Regional Foods and Farming. The Lord is good to me,
and so I thankful Lord for giving me the things
I need, the sun and rain and at sea. Yes,
Ease's been good to me. I waked up every day

(16:43):
as happy as can be because I know the green
of this hare, my apple trees, they was to be
there all the Lord good to me. Welcome back to

(17:13):
point of origin today. Cider Coast to Coast and representing
the West Coast. A really cool dude, someone that I
like very much, an old friend of mine who has
been making cider in Santa Cruz or just outside of
Santa Cruz for the last couple of years. This company
is Tanuki Cider and We're very pleased to have Robbie

(17:36):
Honda Cider Maker joining us today. UM point of origin.
Thanks Robbie and Man, thank you so much. I kind
of mentioned to you that I have been theorizing about
the rise of cider as I'm starting to see more
small growers on restaurant list and bars when I'm out

(17:57):
and about in the world. But before we start to
talk about cider at large, I wanted to talk to
you about how you got into the business of making cider. Sure,
let me see. So, I think the main inspiration came
from some family history. My mom grew up in western
Sunoma County in the town called Sabastopool, on the apple

(18:19):
orchard that my great grandfather planted almost a hundred years ago.
My grandmother was born and raised on this orchard, as
well as my mom and my five aunties and some
of their cousins. And my brother and I grew up
down south in Orange County outside l A, southern California,
but we'd spend all summers and you know, holidays, traveling

(18:40):
up to the orchard to go visit family in Sabastopool. So,
I mean some of my fondest, earliest memories are outside
of suburbia. Were runt of the apple orchards of my
cousins and cruising around throwing rotten apples at each other
and eating fresh apples through in the fall. Did it
hurt to get hit with a rotten apple? Or is
it just annoying a dude? It's stinky, but it was

(19:02):
really fun, you know, super novel. We'd go up during
Thanksgiving sometimes, you know, and that's pretty much post harvest.
Things are wrapping up up in Sabastopol and there's a
bunch of rotten apples on the ground that people haven't
cleaned up, and the animals running through. So my brother
and my cousins you throw on our country clothes and
go out on the orchard and run around and smash
each other with apples. That was really funny. Yeah, Well,

(19:25):
it's cool that you are still connected to that extremely
long legacy. I didn't realize your family went back so
far in Sebastopol. And for people who are not familiar
with Sebastopol, can you say a little bit about their history? Again,
as you mentioned, it's in Sonoma County, northern California, but
can you say a little bit about the history of
cider and Sebastopol in particular. Yeah, I mean, before Sonoma

(19:49):
County and Napa Valley were known as as grape country
wine country, they were definitely apple country, especially western Sunama
County where Sebastopol is located clu to the Russian River,
it gets a lot of that coastal dog similar to
where I'm at now in the central coast in Santa Cruz.
You know, there was a long history and tradition of
of apple growing in Sebastopool. Specifically, my great grandfather came

(20:10):
from Japan in the early nineteen hundreds to San Francisco.
The earthquake happened, and he ended up in the countryside
in Sebastopool as doing my grant apple labor. Back then,
industry was booming. There were tons of packing houses, dryers, juicers,
apple sauce. I mean, there was a huge industry of
apples going on in the early nineteen hundreds. My family

(20:34):
was a part of that. Like a lot of other
people in the area. Agriculture was big, and apples was
huge for my family. A lot of things changed during
World War Two. My grandmother and my great Auntie were
born on the orchard my family were interned into concentration
camps across the country and they had to leave. But
they were lucky that they had a caretaker for the

(20:54):
land and after the war they had something to come
home to. A lot of other families in the area
weren't so lucky. So after my great grandparents and my
grandma relocated back home. It's a basketpool. That's where my
mom and all my aunties were born and raised on
the same orchard, still doing the same work that they've
been doing for decades before. With my family history. Um,

(21:16):
my mom and that generation wanted to get out of
Apple biz and they were focused on education and moved
into this city in the suburbs. That's where I grew up.
And after remembering some of this tradition in this history,
my brother and I kind of got interested in this
idea to start a project out of nothing. You know,
just kind of felt some sort of special connection to

(21:40):
this history, into this piece of land. And you know,
a few years ago we kind of through it out
there and I've gotten a lot of local support here
in Santa Cruz will We're based out of now and
living and working and connected to the greater Apple community.
Insider making community, and it's been it's been a wild
ride and a lot of work to do, but we're
really grateful. It's really an incredible legacy that you're tied to,

(22:01):
and the way that you're showing up and honoring it
is super inspiring. Is that property still in your family? Yeah,
it is. It's in gold Ridge Designation and Silastapol. It's
a lot of apple trees have been ripped out and
a lot of grapes have gone in Peano No War
especially is really kind of well known for that area.
It was much larger in the past, but there's seven
acres that remain. Our kids represent the fifth generation that

(22:25):
little piece of dirt. You know, it's definitely something that
we're inspired by and proud of and trying to share
stories in our experience here, you know, as a family
and as just people trying to pull it off. You know,
it's interesting to hear you talk about it in such
matter of fact terms, but it's not just apples. We

(22:45):
also know that around the same time agriculturally, you know,
we have Japanese immigrants to think for the rice culture
of California as well as the potato culture. As you mentioned,
you are now a father, how important is that legacy
for you in your own household or how much do

(23:05):
you think about, you know, continuing and sharing that agricultural
legacy with your family. Yeah, man, that's a great question.
I think about that a lot. Our household is multi
ethnic and multicultural. My wife is from England, She's half
English and half Mauritian. Her family has a really interesting
and amazing history and legacy as well as far as

(23:26):
the Japanese American aspect of it. Yeah. I think when
I kind of learned about all the history, I don't
know exactly when that happened, I kind of like started
to strongly identify with kind of those struggles and experiences
that my family and other families, Japanese American families were
going through, especially post war and then the baby boomers
my parents generation kind of what they were going through.

(23:47):
And it's interesting because my parents and my aunties they
kind of look at agriculture and even you know, my
side are making aspirations as being a bit naive, which
they're probably right. I mean, yeah, they were born and
raised on this order you not a lot post war,
and their goals were through education and to leave the
countryside and to power themselves that way. And I'm kind

(24:09):
of going backwards a little bit and trying to remember
some of that stuff and definitely like share that with
my kids, but also like without trying to romanticize everything
too much, you know, trying to share it with them
and then just I don't know, like kind of create
a new chapter in this experience and decided projects is
a really amazing creative way for us to do that too,

(24:29):
connect to community. It's been really cool to do that, Yeah,
And that is so often the case for children of
immigrants or children really of most marginalized groups whose ancestors
have had to struggle for equality, have had to struggle

(24:51):
for access into the workplace, for equal employment, and it
can be really disorienting for the old heads when the
youth says, actually, I want to go back to the
land and reclaim this part of our identity. So I'm
super familiar with that tension that you speak of. So
I want to talk to you now about this community

(25:12):
that we're referring back to. When did you start, Tanuki
Timiki started in two thousand fifteen. How have you seen
that community change and grow over in the last four
or five years there were no cider businesses in Santa
Cruz County specifically, and now seven years later, they think
there are six of us, you know. I think the

(25:34):
first one was with Santa Crustider Company two thousand thirteen,
and who we've become really close to. We've collaborated on
a lot of projects. We're helping each other out. We
actually just bought a grinder and a crest together that
we're hosting, but hosted by our apple grower in Cornidos
in Watsonville. So there's a strong community. But yeah, since
we've been involved, it's grown a lot. When we had

(25:55):
our first release in two thousand fifteen, we were kind
of hitting the road and streets trying to promote and
sell this one package product that we had, and there
weren't very many cider options on drink lists and menus.
I kind of came into this cider world from working
on a farm in Santa Cruz and Socil and work

(26:16):
in the farmers markets. We did Pasture's Meats and had
a c s A and worked with a lot of
local restaurants in Santa Cruz County, so I had most
of my connections were in the food world, so that's
kind of where I was reaching out to first. Opposed
to like markets or liquor stores, it was to the
restaurants and trying to focus on pairing cider with food

(26:36):
as are kind of like angle. And also it's being
like a local product. That's kind of most of the
credibility that we had coming out was the fog Line
connection and us being like a small local business and
we've gotten a lot of support locally. Man, it means
a lot. You know, I don't have a background and
viticulture or analogy. You know, I didn't come from an
elite whine making background or anything. You know, kind of

(26:59):
came im a more fantasy world of this family history
and working on a farm and experimenting with tormentation on
a really simple, kind of minimal intervention level, let fruit speak,
trying to you know, get the best source fruit available
at the time and allowed it to do its things,
get out of the way and doing small batches. And
that's kind of like where we're Our whole identity has

(27:22):
been like focused towards Yeah, definitely, I kind of love
that you have come to this industry with all heart,
so coming into that that industry knowing I don't want
to say very little, but maybe not as just prepared
as people who had that formal education. What were some
of the challenges that you experienced in making that transition

(27:43):
and what have you learned? Yeah, one of the one
of the more interesting things right after that was that
there weren't a lot of references to to cider. You know,
so when I was going around trying to talk about
what we were doing and how to promote our products
and share it, there wasn't a model of the knowledge
and baseline for you know, bar managers owners to reference

(28:05):
far as what cider was and is we are making, like,
you know, a dry what we call farmhouse style ciders.
I think that you know, even five years ago, there
wasn't a ton of commercially available siders that had some
of the characteristics that we were going for. I think
a lot of people, originally um and still to this day,
to be honest, you know, associate cider with being really

(28:26):
sweet in carbonated, and so when we're trying to share
our ciders and that has a completely different flavor profile.
I think it was especially you know, back in two
thousands fifteen, really surprising to people. They weren't expecting it,
and I think there's a big demand for this, like
this specific beverage in our style up there, you know,
m hm. And can you explain in a little bit

(28:48):
more detail, because I know that farmhouse cider is a
thing that we see on many different bottles, but what
does that actually mean if we if we see a
farmhouse cider. Yeah, kind of blanket term. And I'm you know,
we're trying to figure out how to describe and lebel
these products to where they have some meeting, you know.
I think the farmhouse term is similar to like a

(29:09):
natural wine type of term. I think the farmhouse term
comes from England and it refers to a style of
production which generally, but not always, but most generally it
refers to native and wild fermentation with yeast, unfiltered and
unpasteurized alive, minimal intervention and you know, kind of like
minimal and you know ours was bottle conditioned as well.

(29:31):
So I think that when someone's going to claim that
farmhouse terms, you can assume that some or most of
that or all of it is involved. But like I said,
it's it's pretty maybe weak. Um. We just started a
native and while fermentation program last fall two thousand, nineteen
and up until then, you know, all of our siders

(29:51):
were unfiltered, unpasteurized, bottle or can conditioned. But we did
inoculate with the yeast, like I said, up until last year.
So when we put farmhouse our labels, they weren't native
and well fermented. We did inoculate. But so that's where
it's kind of like tricky maybe. And the apples that
you are using for these spontaneous fermentations, what are some

(30:16):
of the different varieties of apples that you all are
working with. Yeah, so we're in Santa Cruise County. We
live in Capitola, and we are really close to Watkinville,
which has a similar history to Sebastopol. The industry here
in Santa Cruise County has been afloat because of a
big juice company that is in our backyard in Watsonville here.

(30:39):
A lot of the apple growers that still exist in
Santa Cruise County have been growing for this company for
a long time, and we we're lucky that that industry
still existed because I mean there's still apple trees around,
you know. So the varieties that we're using are kind
of a legacy of of these big dispect juice company
that's like a lot to survive and thrive. The Newtown

(31:02):
Pippin is the kind of Pato Valley apple, or we've
claimed it, it's actually from New York. There's been some
really cool like tear washed studies on this specific apple
variety of the new Town Pippin where they took this
one variety and had different siders made from it from
New York to Michigan, Southern California, Sonoma County in Santa

(31:23):
Cruz and it's pretty fascinating. So we're lucky that the
Newtown Pippin is established here in this area and we're
looking for standard stock old trees that are dry farmed
and organic ideally for what we're going for in our cider.
So do you ever have a chance to use I mean,
I know logistically moving around a bunch of fruit up
and down the coast is complicated, But do you ever

(31:45):
have a chance to use some of the fruit from
Sebastopol and the ciders? Yeah, no, I haven't yet. That's
something that we were working on. We'd love to collaborate.
We have a lot of friends in Sonoma County that
makes cider and their apple growers and it's something that
we're hoping to do here to. I was in nineteen harvest,
like in Sebastopol, we were talking about part of that

(32:06):
legacy agriculturally being undermined or under threat with the growth
of Sonoma County as a wine destination, which has really
been underway for you know, many decades and still continues
to this day. I know that that's a big concern
in Sebastopol, the kind of preserving the legacy of these orchards.

(32:31):
What about the fruit source closer to where you are
in Capitola, are there similar concerns about the supply or
viability of these old orchards. Of course, yeah, you know
where we're at, specifically with the fruit that we're sourcing,
mostly in cor Leos and Watsonville. It hasn't been so
much the grape industry, although the grape industry is alive

(32:52):
and thriving big time, but mostly in the mountains here
in Santa Cruz County. But it's the very industry. So
a lot of these old orchards are feeling out of
pressure or have samethings like you're talking about for decades
with berries coming in so ripping out these old orchards
that have been established, you know for decades up two
years old, you know, ripped out and planting berries. So, yeah,
there's a similar kind of like renaissance happening here in Watsonville.

(33:16):
We're trying to rehabilitate and revive the apple industry. Cider
is a way to do it. We're able to like
diversify some of the income that these apple growers have
traditionally been used to, which is kind of like been
monopolized by one way that to sell a product totally.
And are people starting to think differently about the role

(33:39):
of these berry farms, which are presumably owned by very
large multinational food companies. Are some of the formers starting
to think differently about preserving these orchards because you all
have created a new, higher value added product. Or is
it still that cider is so small compared to the

(34:02):
economics of these large scale agricultural outfits that it's still
not really like a viable thing to try to hold
onto the orchards. Yeah, that's the that's the question as
far as I understand me, Just the price of apples
is just so low, it's unfairly low, you know, opposed
to the price of berries amount of money you can
make off of an acre of berries and an amount

(34:23):
of money you can make off of acre of apples
is you can't even compare it, you know. So I
do empathize with these families, especially the older ones that
have been around here trying to figure out how to
pull it off, you know. So, yeah, it's it's our
mission trying to figure out how we can keep these
old orchards around, because you know, once you rip out
an orchard that's been standing for decades, up to a

(34:44):
hundred years. I mean, obviously, the quality of that fruits
can be completely different than an orchard planted two years ago,
you know, getting fruit in five years. You know. So
there's a huge value in these orchards, and how do
we save them? You know, that's the question. And in
our small way, we're trying to you know, empower the
growers a little bit by offer them a better price

(35:04):
for their fruit, you know, and and highlighting this area
and this growing industry as something of value for people
to come to, to support, to check out, to walk
through the orchards, to try the cider, you know, take
the tail of this area to you know, share these
stories and hopefully it will it will help post to
the opposite. Yeah, well we we also as consumers need

(35:27):
to help you out by a drinking more cider, which
is an easy ask really right. So um, last question
for you is just around the viability of your work.
You know, I what you're doing is not just important
because of the delicious value added product, but I certainly

(35:48):
look at your work this way, which is as a preservationist,
you know, not only in your own family, but in
creating new possibilities for the existence of these orchards. But
what about you, yourself and Tanuki. Are you feeling positive
or hopeful about your long term viability in this work
or is it too early to say yeah, no, thanks?

(36:11):
So we're definitely excited. Yeah, like you mentioned, you know
me us having a young family here in Santa Cruz,
we are trying to pull it off in this town
and we get a lot of support locally, and it
means a lot Our style of side are making Maybe
is just I don't know how common it is. I've
met of a few people that are kind of in
our position, but we don't have our own production facility

(36:32):
or tasting room. We've worked with like a handful of
different wineries that have helped us produce our ciders, were
renting take space over here in Sotel and over here
on the West side. And so our goals now are
to find at home, set up shop, get our equipment,
and you know, maybe set up a little tasting room.
There are a lot of examples here, mostly in the

(36:52):
wine industry in Santa Cuse County that we admire and
our big inspiration for us. They've been able to keep
things small and independent. And you know, there's a couple
wineries in Santa Curies that I can think of specifically
that do their production, that have a tasting room under
three thousand square foot facilities and they do the business
through their front door, and even more, you know, with

(37:13):
a handful of wholesale accounts, and that's something that we
are trying to do. I think that if we could
go retail and still self distribute wholesale and offer our
products to our community, that's kind of like where we're at,
and I do feel hopeful, yeah, looking forward to like
what happens next. Yeah, that is definitely the move. You know,

(37:34):
every day that you have an opportunity to keep doing
this work is a day that you're you're winning, So
congrats to you for the last four years and what
you've built and where can people buy your cider so
that we can facilitate you getting that tasting room. So
about nine of our businesses in Santa Cruise County. Anyone's

(37:56):
familiar with with Santa Cruz the usual suspects or places
that you can sign outsiders, So you gotta come to
Santa Cruz. That's the moral story. Hey, you know what
it's It's alive. It's a living product, so that will
preserve its integrity. So in Santa cra is a lovely
place to visit. This has been a lovely conversation with

(38:16):
Robbie Honda, who is the founder of Tanuki Cider, continuing
a one hundred year legacy and his family making cider
and working with apples, really really good stuff. Thanks a
lot for joining us today on Point of Origin. Thank you,
I appreciate it. Welcome back to Point of Origin today

(39:16):
Cider Coast to Coast and I am in Oakland, California
with Olivia Mackie and Mike Reas of Redfield Cider and
we are going to talk aboutsider. So thanks for hosting
me in your shop before opening thanks for being here,
and we apologize in advance if any deliveries happen. This
is a working space. Well hopefully you guys get some

(39:38):
deliveries because that means you're turning over the inventory, which
is good issues turning over inventory since we opened. So
you guys opened eight months ago. And has that fast
toneover been the case from the beginning or is that
a new thing actually been um when we When we
first opened, we had no idea really how the business

(39:59):
would received. There weren't any other cider bars in the
area that we could point to and say this is
our model and this is going to work. We actually
looked at a lot of different wine and beer bars
to sort of figure out, you know, if that same
systems in place would work for this space itself. And
we've been pleasantly surprised. It's been a pretty popular joint
since we opened. So when you wanted to open, you

(40:20):
guys were looking at like wine bars or small breweries
as examples of kind of the vibe you wanted to establish. Yeah,
I think anything that felt like it fit within the
neighborhood itself and had a sense of place was important
to us. We intentionally designed red fields actually be pretty small.
We have about twenty five seats, and that was really

(40:40):
set up to to create an intimate space so as
soon as someone walked in, Mike and I would be
able to greet them, make eye contact, and really provide
excellent customer service. Yeah, we knew, you know, cider bar
was going to be a new concept for a lot
of people. And so while there are you know, a
couple of cider bars are there were a couple of

(41:00):
cider bars in the Bay Area. When we opened a
couple of really cool cider bars, we also kind of knew,
you know, if we want to be a place where
people are gonna be comfortable coming into try cider for
the first time, it had to be a really cool
and welcoming space beyond just a place that has a
bunch of ciders. Um. So yeah, we were definitely like
looking at our favorite beer bars, a favorite wine bars
and seeing like what worked there and trying to bring

(41:23):
some of that in. So let's talk about your origins, insider.
How did you all get to the point where you
wanted to dedicate your entire life to selling and drinking cider. Yeah,
I mean, Mike and I have been in the food
and beverage industry for the past ten years. My background
is actually more in agriculture and in food, and Mike's
definitely been working in the beer industry for a long
long time. And we started drinking cider probably like six

(41:46):
or seven years ago. I before I met Mike, I
had never really thought about cider. I spent much time
trying it at all. And we tried some tilted shed
cider up in Cinnoma County and I just remember tasting
it and being like, I didn't know cider could taste
like this, This is delicious, and um, you know, Tilda
Sheds ciders have a ton of tannin. They have a

(42:08):
lot of character, you know, really beautiful like floral notes.
And I just remember being like, oh, this is kind
of like wine, Like I'm drinking this and I'm enjoying
this like wine. And then I learned more about, you know,
how they're growing the apples and the thought and care
that they put into making all of their ciders, and
was just blown away. And then I had this moment
where I was like, why doesn't everybody know about this?
Like why aren't we not drinking this? Why is it

(42:29):
not on all of the menus, and over time made
more and more sighter ourselves just in our backyard, got
to know more and more cider, cider producers and apple growers,
and kind of just fell in love with the beverage
and spawned into well, there's like no place to drink
cider and like learn about it, and you know, given
our backgrounds, maybe maybe we should do it. Are we
crazy enough to start our own business? Yeah. I first

(42:54):
got into cider as a beverage program director at a
really beer folk a spot in San Francisco, and we
definitely like started having people ask about cider and I
was like, I don't know anything about this. Um. This
was like twenty eleven, probably somewhere around there, and there
was certainly a lot of cool stuff happening insider at
that point, but I was not aware of it. So

(43:14):
that was when I started seeking out more and more stuff,
and me and Live started drinking it and making it ourselves,
and I kind of got to the point where I
was like, oh, I want to be able to buy
more cool stuff. I'm hearing about all this great stuff
and the Pacific Northwest and all this great stuff in
the Northeast, So I don't have access to as like
a buyer for a restaurant, and that led to me
going and working at a wholesaler and like trying to

(43:35):
bring in a bunch of cool producers and then like
getting frustrated with trying to sell it to retailers that
didn't care about it, and so then like it was like,
all right, well, we're just gonna have to open the
shop ourselves. Well, so that timeline kind of checks out
for me as a cider lover in terms of seeing
new ciders in the marketplace and having a similar experience,

(43:56):
illuminating experience that was more evocative of like line. So
we're now talking let's say, like maybe seven eight years
or so. It's not like their cider bars, you know,
on every corner or anything like that. But you guys
both kind of had a specific marketion of when you
saw this trend, both in your own lives and an

(44:16):
opportunity maybe more commercially. So what have you observed over
the course of the last half decade or so to
either support those ideas that you had in the early
days or maybe kind of our running counter to some
of the assumptions that you were making about where the
industry would be at this point. I think that's such

(44:37):
a such an important question to ask because something that
Mike and I say a lot is I don't even
think this business would have worked three years ago. And
we've been talking and thinking about this probably for like
three or four years, and timing was such a huge
part of that of when do we think that specifically
the Bay Area would be ready for a space like
this and be open to trying it. And we do

(44:57):
think that, like we were pretty spot on with with
the opening. Speaking of timing, then you guys are really
well time because if you like a good underdog story,
this is the moment, right And if we look at
microbrewers preceding cider maybe ten fifteen years ago as the underdogs,
it's not maybe so great, you know, the direction of

(45:19):
those microbrewers in terms of consolidations and acquisitions and more crowded,
if and not necessarily better marketplace. So are you guys
and other your cider colleagues looking at some of the
perils of the craft beer movement as what not to do?

(45:40):
Are you guys not thinking about it in those terms?
I think we're constantly looking at the wine and beer
industry and making comparisons. We do think that cider is
its own thing, but there are a lot of parallels
that you can draw from from both. And in terms of,
you know, trends that we could skip over, I think
we could really look at the beer industry and just
completely pass over all of like this excess beer labels,

(46:01):
Like I'd be totally okay with that. Take note cider industry.
But yeah, I mean in terms of growth, there are
some parallels of like if you look at some of
the like Nielsen data around the growth in the cider industry,
especially among small producers, it's really exciting to see. But
we just don't quite have the sales data that a
lot of the beer and wine industry do because oftentimes,

(46:22):
if you look at those data sets, citers like a
subcategory of beer, even though it's not beer at all,
it's it's technically wine, So it's it's hard to kind
of like dig into those numbers. I think in the
same way, Well, let's talk about natural wine specifically. I
mean we've mentioned wine. Are there elements of the comparisons
or the observations that you're taking from the wine industry
that are is it broad base or are you looking

(46:44):
at natural wine as a category as a place to
also take some lessons from. I mean, there is a huge,
a huge supporter of Redfield has been the natural wine industry,
and a lot of our customers that come in are
people who seek out natural wine, and they also seek
outsider because of some of the similar, you know, tasting
parallels between the two groups, and so it's been exciting

(47:05):
for us too. I mean also, a lot of natural
winemakers are also cider makers, so we carry a lot
of those people and the cider that they make here.
And natural wine is also like having a moment right now,
for sure, and I'm I'm sort of happy to to
cling on those coattails and and bring cider along with
it as much as we can to a new audience,
for sure. Yeah, I mean I love drinking natural wine,

(47:28):
but I don't really consider myself a part of that
industry or scene. But my perception as a bit of
an outsider is that there's just kind of this excitement
about breaking tradition and norms, and I think the fact
that cider doesn't have quite as much of that, at
least here in the US, is kind of part of
what's made it appealing to that scene. Um yeah, we're
definitely trying to encourage drinking across across fruit boundaries. Uh yeah,

(47:54):
there's kind of a trend insider now to do um
wine cider like co ferments or hybrids, and I've definitely
been really excited by a lot of those. I think
some producers are probably thinking the same way. And what's
happening in the cider industry right now is so many
consumers don't know how to buy cider. They don't we
walk into a grocery store and they don't know how
to figure out what's it going to taste? Like, Um,
you know, am I going to enjoy this? Is it

(48:15):
worth the price point? And packaging can say so much
about that. And I remember in our podcast we were
actually like pretty adamant that we thought seven fifties should
maybe start to go away and and producers should be
more open to smaller formats because they're more approachable to consumers.
And we've since sort of taken those words back since
opening Red Field because seven fifties have been incredibly popular

(48:37):
and a great format for us to sell on the shelves.
So it's what changed. Do you think it was the
passage of time and like a more mature marketplace, because
now you're saying here, you guys are having some success
with it, So so what do you you think changed
based on those prior experiences. I mean, red Field is

(48:58):
is a very friend sighter experience then you will get
anywhere else in the Bay Area. We really heavily curate
what we bring in. We offer on an off premise
so you can taste stuff and then take it home.
And our our ethos behind our buying buying practices is
to create almost like a like a safety net. So
everything that we bring in has to pass through our

(49:19):
buying practice isn't an addition to that. It has to
be something that Mike and I like to drink. Um,
So we only sell stuff that we like to drink,
and we have a really wide range of stuff that
we appreciate and like to drink. So whenever you come
in and you walk in you're like, hey, I want
to buy a bottle, Like can you help me, You're
going to get a really really into hepth experience with
one of us. Also, there's probably a lot to be

(49:40):
said about the kind of person who would find their
way into this kind of an establishment. But what about
if someone's listening to this who is not in Rock
Ridge in Oakland, but now they're sufficiently intrigued about drinking cider.
What's the best way for like a common person in
a commonplace to engage in this journey of cider. It's

(50:03):
a tough question to answer, just because you know, like
the the availability of cider throughout the country varies so much.
If you can find a place that has a cool
cider selection, what we usually look for, like on cider labels,
is some kind of transparency about about what goes into it,
whether that's like production methods or agricultural practices that lead
to the fruit that they're sourcing for the use in

(50:26):
the cider. That's stuff that we really look for because
you know, usually if someone is spending more money on
fruit and taking the care to select varieties that they're
using to kind of generate a specific flavor profile that
they're hoping to kind of hit, then it means they're
proud of it and wanted to be on the label.
That's a very short shorthand like way of of approaching things.

(50:50):
You know, in a lot of places of the country,
it's just like getting that first cider on the restaurants,
you know list or in the grocery store shelves. You know, it's, uh,
it's not always an easy thing to achieve, but I
guess just you know, asking of it, getting relationship with
your retailers, and and uh showing some kind of support
that they're going to move when they bring it in.

(51:11):
Uh yeah, I mean I would also just encourage people
to try a couple of different ciders. So oftentimes, if
you're at a restaurant, there's like one cider on the menu,
and can you imagine going to a restaurant and they're
just being one wine. It's like, Nope, all we've got
is is like Peanot noir, and like that's all the
wine that we carry. And that's kind of what's happening
to cder right now. It's getting sort of pigeonholed into

(51:32):
just being like, you know, one last like thought is
like a gluten free alternative, and so if you try
one sighter and you don't like it, I would encourage
you to try like five or six, because similar to
wine or beer, there's such variation and flavor and texture
and and it's just such a nuanced beverage. I really
can't state that enough and to just reiterate when Mike said,
I mean, cider is an agricultural product, and if you

(51:54):
meet people who are growing apples, they might know someone
who's making cider, and that could be another great way
to to try and figure out, like who who is
really in touch with the fruit that they're using, because
it's probably going to be a much higher quality product. Yeah,
I mean, I think in a lot of places you go,
you can you can try the first five or six
ciders that you encounter, and and maybe there they might
all be getting bulk juice from the same source and

(52:17):
amending it with you know, Oregon fruit puree or whatever.
There may not even be like a huge range across
those first five or six ciders that you try. So
I often like to steer new drinkers to try imports,
knowing full well that like they may not even like it,
but just to kind of like set the tone that like,
here's something totally different that you might be excited by.

(52:39):
Like we offer we always offer a flight on our
menu that's like a pretty big range of ciders, like
knowing full well that most people will not like all
three of them, and we kind of present it that way,
like here you can try a big range of stuff
and then we can go from there, which is a
little bit of a hard experience to replicate in a
lot of the country. But you know, they're also options

(53:00):
like like one of our better cider retailers and an
incredible wine retailer in the Bay areas knel Ones, and
they shipped to like forty states or something like that,
So you know, maybe if your town doesn't have a
great cider selection, that's an avenue worth exploring is finding
some cool online retailer that can ship to you. On
the one hand, it feels like cider is super duper

(53:22):
taking off and becoming more ubiquitous, especially in coastal cities.
Will say, and there's more labels, the marketing and the
packaging is getting better, and there's like this sense of
inevitability that like cider is the next big thing. But
on the other hands, even since you guys have opened,
it's not like they're cider bars popping up on every corner,

(53:44):
and there's still a lot of consumer education that has
to happen, and it just feels kind of further away
from like coming to a grocery store, like a Kroger
near you. So I wonder, since you guys have been
here for eight months, knowing all you know about cider,
both about your special situation here in Oakland in the

(54:06):
marketplace more broadly, how much truth is there in this
kind of inevitable next thing for cider and how much
of that am I perpetuating just because I'm living in
these coastal cities where I'm seeing it more and more. Well,
one thing that's been most exciting to me about being
in this space and like seeing what kind of customers

(54:26):
come through here, is that there's a lot of young people,
like a lot of college kids from cal come in here,
and it's just, you know, drinking cider is just a
super normal thing for them. And I have seen some
some of that supported and you know Nielsen trends just
in terms of like the how young cider drinkers are
by and large, and that's really encouraging. I don't think

(54:49):
people are gonna get passionate about cider and then just
you know, stop drinking it as they get older. So,
you know, I think as that base gets older, and hopefully,
like you know, cider continues to res in it with
you know, younger generations as they grow into drinking age.
That's I think a really healthy sign for cider's future.
So that's really encouraging to me. Yeah, I mean, there's

(55:10):
no way to predict the future, but I would say
that obviously we're optimistic about it. Otherwise we wouldn't have
started a business doing it. But I would say that
the past couple of months have been really encouraging in
terms of the type of people that we're getting in here,
and like you know, just the volume that we've been
able to do. It's been really encouraging. Okay, well, TBD

(55:31):
is the answer, all right, Mike Olivia, thank you so
much for taking the time to talk to me about
cider today. I appreciate it much for having us h

(55:57):
h h h h h m m m m m
m m m m m m m m m m.
And that's it for this episode. Point of Origin is
a podcast from My Heart Media and wet Stone Magazine.
Executive produced by Christopher Hasciotis and hosted by me Steven Saderfield.

(56:22):
Special thanks to Cat Hong for editing, supervising producer Gabrielle Collins,
and a very special thanks to my business partner wet
Stone co founder Melissa she who helped produce this podcast.
Thanks mel and thanks to all of you for supporting
wet Stone and listening to the Point of Origin podcast
for all of the latest on all things point of Origin.

(56:45):
You can follow us on Instagram at wet Stone Magazine
or online at wet Stone magazine dot com. We'll see
you next week at the Point of Origin. W