COVER | CIDER SPOTLIGHT
MERRIDALE : A STORY OF APPLES AND PASSION
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>> WORDS & PICTURES: BRIAN K. SMITH
t Cobble Hill in southern Vancouver Island’s Cowichan Valley is the apple farm that’s home to the granddaddy of BC Craft Cider: Merridale Cidery and Distillery. Original owner Al Piggott operated an orchard cidery there beginning as far back as the early 1980s with a staff of just two and a half, including himself. In 1990, through a provincial government special order in council, the farm was one of the first within BC’s Agricultural Land Reserve to be awarded an ‘Estate Winery’ licence. Since there were no specific regulations for cideries, Merridale was directed to follow the same rules and regulations as wineries…with the caveat that they were not allowed to sell their ciders to BC’s VQA Wine stores. From then on, Merridale blazed a trail as BC’s first modern orchard cidery. In 1999, Al Piggott moved on and Merridale’s current co-owners, Janet Docherty and Rick Pipes, stepped into the cider business. They toyed beforehand with whether to purchase Merridale or forget about it and go off to Spain for a romantic one-month sailing trip. The cidery won and became a 20-plus-year love affair.
Planting the Seeds Janet and Rick had a vision of what they wanted for Merridale and knew there were many changes needed to make their dream a reality. Challenges both bureaucratic and political soon presented themselves. When asked to recall things that might have been in 14 WHAT'S BREWING S P R I N G 2020
their way, Janet responded, “What wasn’t in the way! Everything was in the way.” Undaunted, Janet and Rick methodically and tenaciously worked through various regulatory obstacles in order to stay focussed on their plan. Rick shares, “In the early 2000s, no one could get a cider license without going to the provincial cabinet for a land-based winery license. As the fruit wineries made inroads, the craft cider business tagged along.” There are two types of cider production in BC. Merridale falls under the umbrella of land-based/agricultural wineries and cideries. Those without orchards are ‘Commercial’, meaning that they purchase their juice or apples in bulk, then manufacture their product and take it to market. “Being land-based, we must bring the clients to us,” Rick mentions. “We do sell our ciders to private liquor stores and supply kegs to some craft brewpubs. But our manufacturing cost is too high for wholesale to government liquor stores.” Janet confirms, “That’s what we chose – to be a craft, to be agriculture-based; that’s our brand.” In the early days, Merridale’s only competition was ‘commercial’ soda-pop style cider. So, they referred to their products as “Artisanal Cider.” Then they incorporated the word “Cidery” in their name. As far as Janet knows, they were the first around to refer to their cider business that way (as opposed to, say, “Cider Maker”). “People would say, ‘Cidery? Is that even a word?’,” she recalls. “Then everyone started using the word cidery—pretty cool.”
