How Do You Like Them Apples?
Throughout Ventura County a band of producers make and sell hard apple cider. While the ciders vary widely, these small and family-owned businesses are unanimous in their dedication to making the best cider they can.
They begin with the same simple process: Take juice from apples (or other fruits and vegetables with high fructose), add yeast to convert the fruit sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide. The final product bears the flavor of the fruit, and may be dry or fruity depending on the residual sugars.
Most start with a base of whole fruit juice shipped from the Yakima Valley, a fertile growing region for apples, hops and wine grapes in southern Washington state. Some are still (no bubbles) but most get force-carbonated, and others are co-fermented with complementary fruit juices and purées, blended with wine or dry-hopped like beer.
Beyond apples, producers are fermenting peaches, mangos, even beets in the method of cider. No matter which fruit or techniques are used, this inspiring group of artisans raise a glass to you.
Night Owl Ciderworks
Ventura
John Pagano launched Night Owl Ciderworks in 2024, securing a space for his tasting room on Main Street in Ventura in time to soft open in December. Pagano started as a hobbyist, picking up medals as he explored the craft and worked with other locals in the industry. “To me, the real magic of cider is how you can create very complex and delicious drinks that start with an apple cider base,” he says.
Family owned and operated, Night Owl Ciderworks utilizes specialty and local fruit. “One question we are constantly asking each other is: ‘Can we make cider with this?’ This is how Avo Cider came to be, and now it is one of our most requested ciders,” says Pagano. “Steeping avocados in apple cider imparts a creamy, velvety feel without making it taste like guacamole.”
Considering the intersection of cider and art, Pagano began fermenting his base apple cider in a musical environment. His Sound Lab Ciders convert fruit sugars to alcohol in the tank where, Pagano says, “We play an album on loop via submersible speakers of my own design throughout the entire process. The notes, rhythm and vibrations change the way the cider finishes, with each piece of music creating its own signature tasting notes and flavors.” At their opening, Night Owl offered Swiftie 6.1% (Taylor Swift, 1989), Run O.W.L. 6.4% (Run-DMC, Greatest Hits), and Deadly 6.1% (Andrew Lloyd Weber, Requiem) for visitors to compare.
Serving from the bar, John’s son Elvis Pagano acknowledges it’s a point of entry for some consumers. “There’s people who appreciate all of the fun behind it, and then there’s people who go, ‘Oh, that Taylor Swift one, I’ve gotta have that one!’” says Pagano.
Food Pairings:
Blood Orange Margarita cider with the Tacos Salseados from Cuernavaca Taqueria
BlackBerry Mojito Cider with the beef curry noodle bowl from VC Events
Dessert ciders such as Salted Caramel Apple or Maple Brown Sugar, currently pouring Peanut Butter Cider that pairs nicely with brownies and chocolate chip cookies.
Visit Night Owl’s Ventura location and try a glass, pint or flight of three. Packaged options come in bottles and cans and outside food is welcome and encouraged.
Night Owl Ciderworks
607 E. Main St., Unit C @nightowlcider
Balcom Canyon Cider
Ventura
After working with other winemakers in Ventura County, Blake Kininmonth and his cofounder set up to sell their ciders in kegs to bars and restaurants in 2020. In January that year Kininmonth started fermenting his first big batch of cider. In order to preserve the 1,200-gallon batch when shutdowns became ubiquitous, he DIYed a counter-pressure bottle filler and was able to package his cider and deliver it directly to retailers.
Balcom Canyon uses 70% culinary apples and 30% crabapples in their base. Their selections bridge the gap between beer and cider, frequently utilizing ale yeasts and dry-hopping (infusing hops at room temperature after fermentation, resulting in the flavor without the bitterness). Kininmonth plays on more familiar beverages to demonstrate the versatility in his ciders and make them more accessible, labeling them as “Beer Style” or “Cocktail Style.”
A favorite of local athletes as a pseudo recovery drink (whole fruit, gluten-free, no added sugar and all the vitamin, polyphenols and antioxidants of a fresh apple), customers swing by freely. The spring debut of Los Mangos 5%, cider made with fresh mango juice, tajin and hot sauce, resonates so well that followers stop by for a taste before carbonation and packaging have even begun. Kininmonth says it should be on draft at Disneyland by early summer.
Kininmonth is experimenting with terroir flavors in cider: “Trees grow in different terroirs with various soil stresses, like wine grapevines. Similar things change the flavors in the apples and other fruit varietals,” Kininmonth says. He laughs, acknowledging that a single-varietal Granny Smith might not hit with customers the same way as a Pinot Noir. “But,” he says, “I assure you the variety of flavor profiles and food pairings in apple wine is very similar to those in grape wine.”
Food Pairings:
Skin to Skin PetNat: Cajun seafood boil
Gateway Session: pizza, burgers, sandwiches
Hibiscus: Mexican food, carne asada street tacos in particular
Vin de Pomme: pork chop, green curry or pad Thai
Stop by the Balcom Canyon Cider production facility in Ventura for a private tasting and four-pack or bottle to go. Now available at Vons in Camarillo, Happy Place Craft Beer, Wine & Spirits and over 500 other locations.
Balcom Canyon Cider
4464 McGrath St., Suite #110 @balcomcanyoncider
Pier City Cider / Four Brix Winery
Ventura
Down the street, Pier City Cider pours at the Four Brix Winery and tasting room, where owners Karen and Gary Stewart added cider to their winemaking operation in 2019. Karen Stewart notes they have 12 flavors available with a seasonal rotation (caramel apple in winter). Best sellers change seasonally, but year-round include Blackberry, Persimmon Lavender and Sour Apple.
Stewart suggests using the ciders at home in a cocktail: Blackberry cider with a splash of gin and their Moheto cider with rum for a spin on mojitos.
Visitors can drink wine or cider and order from the in-house kitchen and on Friday nights listen to live music in the barrel room with the occasional option of local food vendors. Once a month they host Blues & BBQ, a great match with the ciders.
Pier City Cider
2290 Eastman Ave. #110 @piercitycider
Anna’s Cider / Fermentation House
Santa Paula
In Santa Paula, Dom and Anna O’Reilly founded Anna’s Cider in 2017, opening their tasting room in August 2020. Almost five years later, they have expanded their offerings and reach, “Our overarching company, Fermentation House, is a lifestyle beverage company focused on crafting elevated and clean beverages that are crushable and affordable. We make natural wine, hard cider and hard tea,” says Anna.
Her business partner and husband, CEO Dom O’Reilly, worked in prestigious wineries before setting out on his own. The O’Reillys wanted to maintain the sophistication of the wine business with a more accessible beverage.
Anna thinks cider’s place in the adult beverage world is unique, “It’s light, low-alcohol, bubbly, and easy to drink like a beer/seltzer/kombucha, etc.” She adds that cider can offer more complexity than ready-to-drink cocktails but more approachability than wine, all within a lower price point.
Anna’s Cider is available in flights, glasses and pitchers at the tasting room on Main Street in Santa Paula. Grab cans to go on-site or from one of their retail partners.
Anna’s Cider
801 E. Main St. @annascider
Camarillo Cider Co. / Back Patio Cellars
Camarillo
The story of Camarillo Cider begins with its sister winery, Back Patio Cellars. Wine and Cidermaker Frank Hules and his wife, Jennifer, opened their tasting room in 2015 with the simple goal of making quality wines to enjoy with friends. When it became too hot during the summer for sipping big bold reds in the barrel-stacked walls of the business park unit, Hules sought out a drink he could serve cold and carbonated to wine club members and visitors. Camarillo Cider Co. was born in 2020.
“I’m just trying to make what I like to drink and I happened to find some people who also like it,” says Hules. He prefers his ciders very dry. “Most people are drinking pints. When they leave here, I don’t want them to be on a sugar high,” he says.
An engineer by day, Hules has experimented with 32 flavors since opening, but blood orange cider is the most popular choice. Try the boysenberry and passion fruit or—Hules’s favorite—hopped apricot cider.
Ciders are available in flights, by the glass, and in bottles to go.
Camarillo Cider Co.
930 Flynn Rd., Unit F @camarillo_cider
Friendly Noise
Moorpark
Best friends Peter Clausen and Andrew Sylvia opened their public tasting room for Friendly Noise in Moorpark last October after four years in business. Their casual tasting room offers wine, cider and piquette (a low-alcohol hybrid of sparkling wine and fruit).
Friendly Noise uses heirloom cider apples grown in California. Sourcing from Sonoma and Ventura growers (coming in late 2025), they press fruit in house or pay their farmers to do so. They make all wines and ciders using yeast present on the fruit (the dusty white layer on the exterior of these fruits). “We think it’s a really critical piece of the concept of terroir,” says Clausen.
He concedes that growing apples and making cider yields low profits, so passion motivates those who work in the industry. “Cider is one of the best American-heritage products left out there, and we love it,” says Clausen. “It’s a truly agricultural product like wine but is quaffable like beer.”
Find these special ciders at the Friendly Noise tasting room on Friday–Sunday, or purchase online or locally at Fluid State and Buddy’s Wine Bar in Ventura and M on High down the street in Moorpark.
Friendly Noise
111 Poindexter Ave., #D @friendlynoise
Giessinger Winery
Fillmore + Westlake Village
“Whatever the apple gives me, I’m gonna keep it in the cider,” says Edouard Giessinger. He began making wine in Fillmore in 1996, and opened his Westlake Village winery and cidery in 2008. With a PhD in physics, he teaches at UCSB and is quick to speak technically about the cidermaking process.
“Balance is the very key between forced carbonation, cider fruitiness, the alcohol content and how you do it is important from the start,” he says. Giessinger uses his Westlake Village facility as a lab, in addition to a tasting room and event space.
Sourcing pressed juice from Yakima Valley, Giessinger works to get the combination right and is quick to highlight the health benefits of the ciders he is making. Additives and chemical processes contribute to American’s poor health, he says. That’s one reason he became interested in fermenting beet juice: because of the natural properties in the root vegetable that improve digestive and vascular health. Owing to the potential for spills and stains, his beet cider is not carbonated, and also comes in peach and apple.
Members at Giessinger Winery receive news about releases and events, including frequent salsa nights at the Westlake location. Tastings and glasses are available in both the Westlake and Fillmore locations, or in bottles to go.
Giessinger Winery & Cider
3059 Willow Ln. , Westlake Village and 365 Santa Clara St., Fillmore @giessingercellars
Illustrations by Ramiah Chu
