Fall is apple-picking time

Eat a pie, sip a cider and celebrate North Georgia’s favorite fruit.

BLUE RIDGE — Riding on a wagon tour of the dwarf apple trees in Mercier Orchards, we were struck by two things:

One: you’re really in the mountains up here. Everything is either straight up or straight down.

Two: You’ve never seen so much tasty growing directly out of the ground.

This feeling of a cornucopia upturned is amplified inside the Mercier market, one of the busiest attractions in Blue Ridge. A warehouse of appetizing options, the 14,500-squarefoot facility offers fresh fruit, fried pies, ice cream, ciders, kitchen supplies and an array of adult beverages that can be sampled in the tasting room.

While Mercier (pronounced “mer-SEE-er”) doesn’t command as much acreage as some other Georgia apple growers, the orchard can fit more of its dwarf apple and peach trees into less room, or about 100,000 peach and apple trees on 300 acres.

The fruit giant does other things on a massive scale. Mercier sold 1.3 million fried pies last year, to customers and to businesses such as the Dwarf House and the Varsity. Their baked pies have also gained some far-flung fans, including one in California who ordered a $12.99 strawberry/rhubarb pie that cost $100 to ship.

Mercier’s enormous cider-making operation was transformed five years ago when the state rescinded its ban on Sunday alcohol sales, and Mercier began making hard cider. It’s truly a farm-to-table operation. The fruit is grown, pressed, fermented and bottled on site.

Cidermaster Ian Flom showed us through the massive refrigerated room where apples are stacked before squeezing, then past the fermenting silos and the pasteurizing equipment, and he offered us a taste of a hops-inflected hard cider, with a decidedly grown-up appeal.

Mercier is also a venue for special events including weddings, many of them staged at the humble 90-year-old apple house, which is one of the oldest structures on the property.

This time of year, of course, apple picking is the big attraction. Fuji, Cameo and Sun Crisp apples are ripe now for $7 a half-peck, $14 a peck and $19 for a half-bushel. But if you want to pick your own, you better hurry.

Mercier welcomes 600,000 visitors a year, and 100,000 of those folks show up in October, so the U-Pick operation is halted for the month.

Info: 7 a.m.-6 p.m. daily. Apple picking is 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. 8660 Blue Ridge Drive, Blue Ridge, 706-632-3411; www.mercier-orchards.com/

CURTIS COMPTON/CCOMPTON@AJC.COM PHOTOS Tour guide Rachel Navarro checks ripening apples in the U-Pick orchard during a tour at Mercier Orchards.

Keith Walker adds bags of ginger gold apples to his cart while shopping in the store at Mercier Orchards on July 22 in Blue Ridge.

CURTIS COMPTON/CCOMPTON@AJC.COM Visitors get a tour from a wagon pulled by a tractor on their way to the orchards.