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Other cideries in the area use wine bottles and sport an alcohol percentage up to 7 percent. They designed the company to have more of a kinship to craft beer, using 12 ounce bottles and a lower alcohol percentage of 4.7 percent, about the same as a light beer. Two years later, in 2012, they were producing in the cider barn.įrom the very beginning, Washburn and Shanks made strategic decisions to make Bold Rock a household name. Washburn and Shanks ended up flying to Virginia to look at the land in Nellysford and they shook hands on the plane ride home, deciding on the name Bold Rock – a tribute to Black Rock mountain nearby. Since then Shanks has worked with some of the largest cider brands in the world before starting his own cider company in New Zealand. Nice detail! Puzzled as to what to do with the fruit, they decided to ferment it and made their first batch of hard cider. He caught the cider bug when a storm knocked all the apples off the trees at his family’s orchard. Shanks had been in the cider business for over 35 years.
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Washburn saw how popular cider was in New Zealand, so he called up Brian Shanks, the foremost cider maker in the country to discuss his idea of start a cidery in Virginia. Semi-retired in New Zealand, the concept of owning a beverage company on Route 151, a stretch of road in Nelson County that was known for its wineries, breweries and distilleries, appealed to Washburn. Washburn owned the land in Nellysford for more than 30 years when he was approached with an offer to buy the property for a beverage company. No surprise to Bold Rock co-founders John Washburn and Brian Shanks, who started the company in 2010. The taproom also carries a variety of bottled ciders along with craft beer. The pub has 18 taps of craft beer on draft at all times, and McFaddin makes sure at least one of them is always a hard cider. “When people think of cider, Bold Rock comes to mind,” McFaddin said. Locally, demand for cider comes from those who are gluten-free, don’t like the taste of beer, or are looking for an alternative to wine, earning hard cider a permanent spot at Brew Ridge. Autumn McFaddin, Brew Ridge general manager, has watched cider’s popularity rise as part of the craft beer trend of the last four or five years. Just look at Brew Ridge Taps in downtown Lexington to see the trend. “It’s funny to say that we’re a family-centric alcohol company, but we are,” said Lindsay Dorrier III, director of retail operations at Bold Rock Hard Cider. The company is now the sixth largest cidery in the nation despite being the only privately-owned company in the top six and distributing its products in only nine states. Nellysford, Virginia-based Bold Rock has seen year to date sales grow more than 100 percent to nearly $8 million. One reason is consumers are turning to their local cideries for a drink. Industry heavy hitters like Boston Beer Company-owned Angry Orchard, which holds 56 percent of national market share, and C&C Group’s Woodchuck, have seen a plateau in the growth rate of cider as of late 2015. Now it’s hard apple cider’s turn at the table in the growing go-local movement.
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It’s like working in a big family.”īrian explains their ciders thus: “What we’ve done at Bold Rock is to produce ciders that have got no harshness–they’re not too sweet, they’re not too dry.” Their ciders have won more than 75 awards.Farm-to-table restaurants and even artisanal denim makers have boomed. “I’ve been very proud of the skills of the people who work with us…. Making cider is more than adding yeast to apples, Brian says. They crush the fruit at its peak, producing juice with the most flavor. John, Brian, and their team of cider makers crush locally picked apples at two cideries: their original Cider Barn in Nellysford, Virginia, and their newer facility in Mills River, North Carolina. John reached out to Brian, and the two became friends and business partners. Brian grew up farming in the New Zealand countryside and had made small batches of cider from his apple orchard before becoming an international cider consultant. John, who grew up in the South, was looking for a use for his farmland in Nelson County, Virginia and had the idea to produce craft cider from apples grown in neighbors’ orchards. Brian Shanks and John Washburn founded Bold Rock Cider to create crisp, delicious cider from Blue Ridge Mountain apples.