Apple of their eye: Cider business sprouting in Milton

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. But when you have barrels of apples, you make cider.

That's the plan for Chris Adams and Marc Poirier, who plan to turn a harvest of apples into a commercial cider operation in Milton, near Clarenville.

Adams' affinity for cider grew from his years living in Ireland, and it continued after the pair began brewing it at home.

An abundance of apple trees around his hometown of Milton gave him the perfect raw material for a business.

"Apple trees grow quite well in Milton," Adams said. "It seems to be a protected little valley there."

Adams suspects people planted the trees years ago, and that seeds from those apples have made their way around the area.

"They just seem to be everywhere there."

Starting small

Poirier said their plans for the Newfoundland Cider Company are to start their business small and grow from there.

"What we're hoping this year is to open a small little cider shop where we would harvest local apples from the many trees in the Milton area and just make small batches of different types of cider from a little factory here," Poiriersaid.

They plan to develop several more acres as a dedicated orchard with the goal of producing several thousandlitres of the golden liquid. Ideally, sales of the product would be from a tap room located at their factory and through Newfoundland Liquor Corp.locations.

While they hope to begin construction of theMilton factory this spring, it may be a while until the cider is available for purchase.

"We're still working through government permits and some red tape before we are actually allowed to sell it," Poirier said.

"Hopefully there are no delays and we'll have our first batch a couple thousand litres at the very least at this end of this fall."

We're really playing with the flavours and different styles.- Chris Adams

The pair plan to experiment with several different blends and varieties of cider as they settle of specific flavours.

"There is quite a range of tastes, really," Adams said.

"We've done dry ciders and we've done sparkling ciders and still ciders. We've done lavender and black currant. We've done smoked ciders you name it," he said.

"We're really playing with the flavours and different styles."