Our Juice

We use the term “juice” instead of cider, but technically our product is sweet cider as opposed to hard, or fermented, cider, and is definitely not the highly processed tan liquid normally found on grocery shelves.

We press apples from our own orchard - honeycrisp, red delicious and golden delicious, until we run out, and then purchase apples from other organic growers in the area. When not using our own apples, we try to source apples from orchards at elevations similar to, or higher than, the elevation of our orchard (1550 feet). Our taste testing has shown that “mountain fruit”, as we call it, has more of whatever it is that makes for a flavorful juice.

Every apple that we process is sorted by hand. A lot of apples that go into our cider shed end up on the compost pile, not in our juice. Each pressing is a bit different, as we select for the quality of the fruit, not a specific blend. After washing, the apples are pressed and the juice is sent through an ultra violet pasteurizer system. Ultra violet treatment eliminates potential pathogens, but does not alter the chemistry of the juice that affects flavor as does pasteurizing with heat. There are no additives, flavor enhancers, or additional sugar – just apples. The goal is to provide our customers with the same sensation we had when we pressed our apples for the first time in 2001.

Our product is delivered fresh immediately following pressing, or frozen, depending upon shipment distance.  Frozen cider keeps well without preservatives, and blind taste tests suggest that something good happens when cider is frozen.  If your juice has been frozen, give it a shake.