- Orchard to Boat to bottle -

At Island Orchard Cider, the story begins with our orchard on Washington Island, WI. Back in 2005, owners Bob & Yannique Purman bought and started the process of planting the orchard with 200 dwarf apple trees - all cider-making cultivars. Every year since the orchard has increased in acreage, trees, and cultivars.  Due to a similar climate and soil, the apple varietals planted in our orchard are similar to those found in Normandy, France. 

20141020_0554.jpg

Harvesting apples & Pears

In the orchard, we harvest all the fruit by hand. The harvest begins in late September and runs through mid-November. To get the fruit to “the mainland” for processing, we truck our bins of fruit over on the Washington Island Ferry. Our little boat logo is a romanticized version of the fruit being ferried across Lake Michigan’s Death’s Door.

Cider Apple Stats

For the Fall 2019 apple harvest owners Bob and Yannique, and their son Leo, spent peak harvest time apple picking in the orchard. Leo had a one particularly long solo day in the orchard to gather bushels of apple-picking data. He came up with some interesting statistics about the number of apples that go into our cider from milk crates to cider glasses. Below are Leo’s approximations, results may vary by apple picker.

  • 110 apples in a milk crate

  • 27 milk crates make up a bin

  • 3000 apples per bin

  • 24000 apples per truckload

  • 60 gallons per bin

  • 50 apples per gallon

  • 10 apples per bottle

  • 2 apples per glass

 

Today, the orchard has 3,000 fruit trees made up of 41 cider apple cultivars, 250 pear trees, and 25 hazelnut trees (for the squirrels). The learn more about our cider fruit trees, click here! It has been a lot of trial and error with some of the cultivars unable to weather Northern Wisconsin’s harsh winters, but we’ve had quite a few trees flourish. However, the orchardist’s job is never done; we continue to experiment with new varietals, fight the occasional blight, and add to our island orchard. 

AERIAL+ORCHARD.jpg
 

Cider Production

The production of our hard cider starts with growing our apples and pears on Washington Island. All of our fruit is picked by hand, transported across Death’s Door to Door County’s mainland, and then delivered to Seaquist Orchard. There the fruit is pressed before being delivered to our Door County Cider House.

Once the fresh juice is at our cider house, the production crew really gets to work. Each ferment takes roughly three to four weeks from start to finish. During that time the crew carefully tends to each ferment, monitoring the progress daily. When the cider is fully fermented, it is stored in a chilled warehouse to mature before bottling. 

Tanks
WORKIN.jpg

Bottling is the last step before the cider is ready for sale. Our diligent bottling crew fills, caps, and packages bottles all year round - all done by hand. When you stop into our taproom on a weekday, you will likely see our production team working away, doing everything from filling bottles to scrubbing the floor — all important steps to produce delicious cider goodness.

 
IMG_0471.jpg