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Left Bank Ciders started when Tim and Anna worked for the compost program at their neighborhood farmer’s market. Every Saturday morning one of the big orchards would borrow a compost bin to fill with bruised, banged, and other “bad apples” they couldn't sell. Most looked just fine, and after doing all we could think of with these apples, week after week, eventually we decided to try our hand at hard cider. Using a food processor and old pillow cases to grind and squeeze all we could from our formidable bushel of apples, we were left with about two gallons of juice, which we fermented, aged, and bottled. It tasted great so we kept at it, gathering castoff apples on Saturday, grinding and pressing on Sunday.
We had already been experimenting with other ferments—mead and fruit wines—but we got really into making cider. Over time we amassed a lot of juice that we gave to friends, took to parties, foisted on our families, and stored under the bed. Once, an entire case burst under the bed, which we didn't realize until we started smelling apples... We dreamed of having more space and more variety to work with. |
Around the same time we were working at the farmer’s market our friend Dave was hired to lead a farm in Ossining, NY and relocated to New York State from Chicago. Over the next couple years, we continued to make cider and other experiments and Tim started growing oyster mushrooms in the basement of Dave’s farm. We schemed about how we could all work together someday, perhaps start a farm or some other agriculture business… By this time, Tim had become passionate about cidermaking.
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In 2018 a friend of ours bought an old building in Catskill, NY that happened to have a decrepit basement that no one wanted… except us! It was a perfect cellar for cider.
Only problem was, it needed a LOT of work. Tim spent a long, cold winter in this unheated basement—taking out miles of wire, pipe, and plumbing, putting in a new floor, addressing all the broken windows, the list goes on and on… Slowly the space was transformed into something sort of useable again. The basement revealed its industrial charms and the wear and tear of time was pretty beautiful. We were happy to restore some glory to this space. |
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Originally, we had planned to buy juice from local orchards—there are so many amazing orchards in the Hudson Valley, even within an hour from Catskill. But as we drove around the Catskill Mountains we spotted wild trees everywhere we went. We couldn’t escape them. They haunted us! In September, we decided to take several leaps of faith and just collect and press as many apples as we could find. |
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It was an incredible year for apples and they were abundant—practically dripping off the trees! We picked roadside apples and apples from trees on public lands… We had a few strokes of luck. We became friends with some extremely generous and very kind locals who shared their beautiful and unique orchards with us—some trees were over 100 years old! These trees were well-loved and cared for and produced so much wonderful fruit. Despite being unsprayed they were magnificently free of bugs and disease. We worked to identify the trees and found that many of them were old and uncommon, wonderful heritage trees—producing both cider and desert apples—that you don’t see much anymore. |
We spent almost every other day in the mountains picking apples. It was a lot of hard work but mostly great fun and not a bad way to spend an autumn in the beautiful Catskill mountains. By the end of the season we had collected over 20,000 pounds of apples in the pick up truck, which we turned into about 1,000 gallons of juice. This we stored in our cellar, fermenting at just the right temperature. In totes, tanks and old barrels the cider waits for its spring debut. Its flavor is varied—special, peculiar, and unpredictable—a result of the incredible diversity of apples we used
It is our mission to make inventive, small-batch ciders that celebrate apples and their environment. But our roots are in compost. In everything we do, we work towards simplicity and use regenerative practices, striving to leave things better than we found them. We are stewards of the earth, and whenever possible we choose the already built, the most biodegradable, the lowest-energy option. We plan to plant trees—we’ll plant an orchard someday—but it's also important that we help our local orchards thrive, working to support and encourage improved farming methods.
Left Bank Ciders are an attempt to explore and bottle a time and place. We are deeply indebted to our neighbors and hope to be a welcoming gathering place for all who seek company and community. New York is a kingdom of apples, and at one point in history there was a cider house in every town. We celebrate that spirit and honor that commitment to community.
