Steve has been bottling his own cider since 2003. As a musician firmly grounded in traditional American Old-time music, Steve can’t help but point out the many parallels to cider: in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, both cider and Old-time music were staples of American culture, only to be sidelined by more mechanized and industrial rivals.

Borrowing from European cider traditions, Westwind Orchard is fully immersed in making some of the most distinctive ciders in the US. While our oldest trees are standard varieties like McIntosh and Stayman, we’ve been planting new orchards of hard cider varieties and grafting our heirloom dessert apple trees with bittersweet and bittersharp varieties.