Three friends toast with drinks at an outdoor table in an orchard.

Meet the Makers Part 1: A Morning at Cambium Cider Co.

At Cambium Cider Co., a third-generation orchard and a sustainable farm-to-table restaurant come together to offer an unforgettable blend of local flavours. For part one of our summer series introducing you to the makers of Vernon, we asked owner and cidermaker Missy to take us behind the scenes of a day at Cambium.

What's the first thing you do when you arrive at the orchard on a summer morning?

Every day is a little different depending on what is happening that day. This morning for example, I drained our pasteurizer into a tank so I could reuse the water for plants, and then I formatted and printed new beverage menus, then hopped over to the bottling team to help with bottling our rhubarb cider. One of my favourite parts of the morning though is when I’m walking by the pollinator flower path we have leading up to the cidery from the parking lot and I can take in all the bees and other activity on the flowers in the morning sun. 

Dining table with appetizers, drinks, and flowers.

What's one part of your job that visitors rarely get to see?

Blending and creating new ciders with my small but mighty cider making team! I have an incredible team of women who help make the ciders and keep things on track, and this involves coming up with new ideas for ciders. This year they have some really fun ones and have been creating some pretty interesting trial experiments — stay tuned for the successes. 

How does the orchard (and the Okanagan climate!) influence the cider you make?

Our orchard influences my cider big time as the whole reason we started the cidery was to make our existing orchard viable, so I’ve had to work with the fruit we already grow — a lot of Spartans and McIntosh. Growing so many “boring” apples like Macs or Spartans pushed me in the early days to be more creative with adding other fruits or botanicals to the ciders. We were one of the first cideries to do so and this approach has allowed us to grow our portfolio to have a cider for every palate as well as use a lot more apples than if we’d just stuck with heritage and cider apples. Also, the orchard being Certified Organic reflects our dedication to keeping our cider preservative free with only real ingredients, and only our organic apples.

The Okanagan climate, especially the long hot summers, allow for great sugar and flavour development in the fruit — leading to complex and aromatic ciders. However the last few years especially have been a wild ride as farmers, climate wise, and there’s always fear of the long term viability of apple trees as the climate is becoming less hospitable and issues like this year’s drought impact our ability to grow fruit.

Band playing music on an outdoor stage with string lights above them.

When someone visits Cambium for the first time, what's one cider or experience you hope they'll leave having tried?

We are now offering orchard walking tours on the weekends, and I think these are probably the best opportunity to learn about who we are, and why / how we grow apples and make cider. We include a couple of cider tastings on this tour, one of them being Modern, which is made from apples from only the part of the orchard that the tour is in. I think it’s pretty special to be standing right among the trees that grew the apples that became the cider in your glass.

Stop at Cambium for: 

✔ Orchard tours

✔ Organic cider

✔ Farm-to-table restaurant

✔ Family-friendly

✔ Outdoor patio

 

This interview is Part 1 of our Meet the Makers of Vernon series - to meet more local craftspeople, click here for Parts 2 and 3. 

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