Ciders Rule!

Up to 70 different ciders and meads were available for tastes

 — by Madie Murray —

From eleven in the morning to four in the afternoon, the Eastsound Village Green was packed with people enjoying the market, the music, and a multitude of ciders and meads.

The big white tent was filled with sixteen hard cider and mead producer’s products, and 481 people were able experience and learn about some of the best hard ciders and meads made in the Great Northwest. The Dustbunnies, the Crow Valley Family Band and Andon Hiltner’s band, Andonimus Sessions, provided really great music all day long; and Mother Nature gave us a lovely, sunny day on Mother’s Day weekend.

Judging the home brew competition was not an easy task

The Orcas Island Home Brew competition again drew 16 bottles of home brewed hard ciders – each trying to topple last year’s winners. The judges: Murphy Evans with Honey Moon Mead, Vince Carlson with Adytum Cellars and Chris Passarelli with Schilling Ciders were very impressed with the quality of entries our Orcas Island brewers submitted.

However, no one was able to beat last year’s first place winner. The Litch/Bishop 2013 Brew of apple and Asian pear cider came out on top again. Second place went to Gil Becerra with his 2013 Quince and apple cider, and third went to Dave Zoeller’s 2013 Harry Masters/Kingston Black/Foxwhelp apple cider.  Our sincere thanks to Crow Valley Pottery for donating the beautiful and coveted award plates.

Beautiful weekend, beautiful day, beautiful people!

Visitors from as far away as England visited the Orcas Island Cider and Mead Festival this year, and almost a quarter of the people entering the tasting tent were from the Mainland, staying on Orcas for the weekend and up to a month. It was a good day for Orcas Island tourism.

A big thanks to our sponsors: Islanders Bank, Ray’s Pharmacy and General Store, and the Northwest Cider Association for helping to make this event possible; the net proceeds of which support the Orcas Island Farm to Cafeteria Program.  And many, many thanks to the wonderful volunteers who helped make this happen!