The Founders

When Warren Proft and Ryan McCann founded King Valley Cider Co in 2011, they did so with a clear goal – to combine their years of experience crafting boutique wine and beer to create a range of genuine craft ciders for cider lovers and first time cider drinkers alike.

Warren, head winemaker at Chrismont Wines, Cheshunt, King Valley, has worked as a wine maker for 20 years, working for boutique and multinational wineries throughout Australia and overseas. With strong technical skills developed both here and abroad and a love of organic and sustainable agriculture Warren drives the day to day crafting of King Valley Cider Co ciders.

Ryan, a Medico, has a background in science and a love of all things culinary, having spent years pursuing perfection in small scale craft beer production. To Ryan, cider making involves ‘creative chemistry’ where chemistry principles are cunningly married with creative flare to produce innovative, exciting and importantly enjoyable results.

Serendipitously, Ryan’s science and Warren’s art collided when Ryan and his wife Bernadette moved from Queensland in search of a “tree change” . They were tired of the hustle-bustle of city life and were excited about a move to a place that facilitated some of their most prized interests. Having lived in the King Valley previously, Bernadette was keen to acquaint Ryan with her friends and the many treasures of the region. And so it was on a hot dry North East Victorian summer afternoon that Ryan got chatting with Warren over a couple of quenching ales and the pair realised they had a shared dream – creating genuine craft cider.

Hence King Valley Cider Co was born.

The Motivation

 

Central to creating King Valley Cider Co was the belief that Australians are being “underdone” when it comes to cider. Warren and Ryan were frustrated by the overabundance of ciders on the market born of apple juice concentrate and sweetened and carbonated to a point of creating fizzy alcoholic apple juice. “We can do better than that” they would rant.

Australian cider has heritage. The tradition of cider making was brought to Australia with the early settlers and there are cider companies that have been in existence for over a hundred years. They wanted to build on this to create an Australian Cider style that pays tribute to the rich English and Western European cider making traditions but is uniquely Australian – something that Australians can be proud of as their own.

It is their firm belief that cider should be seen as neither beer nor wine – rather as a style unto itself. With the growth in popularity of cider it appears that the public are open to this.

It is these core passions that drive the pair to leverage their years of experience in wine and beer production to produce King Valley Cider Co ciders – real, craft ciders that are truly unique products with their own particular merits and quirks.

The Production

These two crackpot scientists began their ‘creative chemistry’ experiments in early 2011 sourcing apples from local orchards, “scrumping” (the process of acquiring apples from sources outside of one’s own property, legally of course!!) wild apples from trees along the King River and from Ryan and Bernadette’s stomping ground, Beechworth, and ‘borrowing’ some beautiful cider apples from a friend’s in the adjoining valley. Every trip in the car was an opportunity for ‘apple spotting’. There was much waving of fists at the local cockatoo population who seemed to be just as excited about the abundance of this underutilised treasure.

Warren and Ryan relished new associations with apple growers in the North East of Victoria. With apple growers doing it tough at the moment due to legislation changes allowing cheap imports and the ever present spectre of seasonable variability, King Valley Cider Co is proud of sourcing local North East Victorian apples for a range of North East Victorian Ciders.

They found that with careful choice of apple variety and proportions of each a delightful balance could be struck between sugar, acid and tannin levels requiring little intervention short of the elbow grease associated with freeing the juice from the pulped fruit. Of course being the crackpot scientists that they are, the lack of intervention was balanced by careful monitoring of conditions to ensure that their creations were coaxed along to their full potential.

After much experimentation they found that fermentation is best achieved by allowing initial wild yeast to ‘do their thing’ before introducing specifically chosen strains of yeast, resulting in a cunning balance between giving over the cider to nature and imposing scientific rigor. The different cider styles resulted from experiments with fermentation of clarified juice, fermentation on apple pulp and barrel secondary fermentation – each of which with their own signature contribution to the whole.

Today, cider production is like a well-oiled machine – insomuch as that the elbows are still well greased and put to good use in these hand-made cider products. Of course there is mechanisation and they wouldn’t be doing justice to their roots if there weren’t bubbling beakers and Bunsen burners in the background. They like to keep it simple though.

The King Valley Cider Co boys (and girls too – Warren and Liz have 3 girls that love sorting through the crates and crates of apples that go into the mix) feel they’re pretty lucky. Despite their belief that cider is neither beer nor wine, they accept that producing it is in fact a cunning marriage between wine and beer making techniques, making this duo a great pair that is destined for great things.