Former Hatter’s West Coast business wins prestigious cider competition
While Kristen Needham left Medicine Hat many years ago to study abroad and make her way in the world, she never forgot her hometown roots.
Needham, who once attended Crescent Heights High and whose father Jim was the founding partner of local architectural firm Russell and Needham, recently got in touch with the Medicine Jat News to talk about an exciting, new development in her life.
Her business — Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse based near Saanichton, Vancouver Island — earlier this month won the Dan Berger International Cider Competition in Sonoma County, Calif. for her traditional Englishstyle cider “Bittersweet.”
“We heard word just before the official press release came out on May 16,” says Needham. “We were over the moon. It’s like you send your cider in a black box (at Sonoma Valley), and you just don’t know what’s going to happen. It was a real affirmation of what we were trying to do 15 years ago when we started.”
Needham credits her father Jim for first planting the orchard bug in her when she was a teenager. He bought a retirement property in British Columbia which had an old orchard on it he wished to refurbish. Sadly, he passed away before that dream could be fulfilled.
Needham decided 15 yearsago to return to the idea. It took her five years just to set up the operation before she bottled her first batch of cider. She took a huge risk early on — planting more than 1,300 trees of “inedible” apples in her orchard. Needham explains further.
“‘Bittersweet’ is a traditional English-style cider. It is made from Dabinetts and Yarlington Mills apples, and a few other varieties, that are really unheard of. You wouldn’t see them at the grocery store or farmers’ market. They are basically inedible, and you can’t buy them. And yet, if you are going to make a truly traditional, English-style cider in North America, you really have to grow those apples yourself.”
Needham is overjoyed this decision has paid off so spectacularly. Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse now sells cider all over western North America in various specialty wine and liquor stores.
Needham feels this latest honour can only lead to future success.
“I think we don’t want to mess with a good thing so we will continue to do what we have been doing, continuing to produce a range of styles of cider,” she says. “We will continue to grow. When we first opened our doors for business 10 years-ago, we produced 5,000 litres that first year. We will be approaching 150,000 litres by the end of this year. There has been kind of a cider renaissance in the last few years. You are seeing more cider and cider-makers on the market.”
Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse brands are available at Trackside Liquor in Medicine Hat.