Cooperative Living March/April 2021 - 15

" The best thing, " Shelton says to
customers who are unfamiliar with
ciders, " is to try them all. There is a
cider for everyone. "
But it wasn't always that way. Even
after Albemarle CiderWorks got rolling,
getting a good glass of well-crafted
Virginia cider was not an easy
commodity to come by.
A BRIT SEEKING CIDER
Ask Stephen Schuurman, owner of
Winchester Ciderworks, located just
northwest of the city.
After moving to Virginia in 2004
to work as an engineer for a plastics
company, he longed for a taste of the
ciders that he grew up with in England,
a country that accounts for about
40% of the world's global sales.
" When I moved here, you couldn't
get any good, real British-style ciders.
What I found is they were too sweet
and usually manufactured by big
beverage companies that didn't pay
much attention to the product. I
decided to do something about it. After
all, I lived next door to an orchard. "
At first, Schuurman thought he
would get in on the burgeoning
Virginia wine scene. He studied
Stephen Schuurman is cider maker at Winchester
Ciderworks, with Diane Kearns (inset) as an apple supplier.
winemaking at the University of
California-Davis. There, he learned
skills that he applied to his early
personal efforts to create his beloved
British-style cider - a smooth drink
that is slowly fermented and aged at
least nine months to reduce the acid
and yield a more balanced feel.
" I made ciders and had a talent
for it. By then, everyone was
into wine in Virginia. So, I
kept my focus on cider. "
His opportunity to live
the dream came in 2011
during a bluegrass music
festival near the George
Washington Hotel in
Winchester. Standing in the
line to get a beer, Schuurman
struck up a conversation with the
woman next to him.
He told her about his interest in
ciders, adding that local friends told
him he had to meet Diane Kearns
someday because she was well-known
as the orchardist at Fruit Hill Orchard
in Frederick County.
" Well, you're talking to her right
Anne Shelton displays one of the
2,200-liter stainless steel tanks where
cider ferments.
co-opliving.com
now, " Kearns responded, laughing
as she recalled how she and Schuurman
met.
Kearns, a fifth-generation apple
grower, owns or manages about 3,000
acres of trees, one of the state's largest
orchards, if not the largest, with annual
production of 300,000 bushels of
apples. Most of the crop used to
go to processors for applesauce
and juices.
" I kept my
focus on cider. "
- Stephen
Schuurman
But since 2009, she
and her family had been
considering going into
cider making.
They bought applepressing
equipment that
had formerly been housed in
a cold storage building the family
already owned. " The problem was that
none of us around here knew much
about making hard cider, " she said.
" I tried the cider he was making
and then I showed him the equipment
we had and that was how our business
partnership started in 2012, "
Kearns says.
QUICK GROWTH
By 2013, they were selling hard
(continued on page 14)
March-April 2021 | Cooperative Living | 13
PHOTO BY STEVEN JOHNSON
PHOTO BY STEVEN JOHNSON
PHOTO COURTESY DIANE KEARNS
http://www.co-opliving.com
Cooperative Living March/April 2021

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