Professor Apple: How Tom Burford sowed the seeds of the Virginia hard cider revival

Vintage Virginia
In 2009 the competition got local when Albermarle Ciderworks began selling hard cider made from Virginia-grown heirloom apple varieties out of another orchard Burford helped start. It takes from five to seven years for apple trees to mature and bear fruit. Back in 1991, Hatch and Burford held the inaugural Monticello apple tasting to expose people to the diversity of flavors, textures and characters of apple varieties that had fallen by the wayside.

Peter Hatch (below), Monticello’s Director of Gardens and Grounds, walking through the south orchard Thomas Jefferson used to grow experimental fruit trees.

At the same time, just a little ways down Hwy. 29 from Monticello, the Shelton family was deciding what to do with the farm they had purchased in 1986. The family was scattered at that point, but Charlotte Shelton, who had been living in Savannah, moved back and attended the apple tasting in 1993. Her brother and business partner, Chuck, who was already experimenting with making cider on the farm, attended the event in 1994.

Chuck remembers tasting 50 varieties, all the while listening to the Burford and Hatch routine.

“It was kind of an eye-opening experience with all of these varieties and delicious flavors,” Chuck said.

Charlotte, a history buff, realized the Sheltons and Burfords had family connections through Amherst County. Tom was still running his nursery and was able to help Charlotte obtain heirloom tree varieties, offering the Shelton’s grafting stock of Hewes Crab from the Monticello Orchard. The Sheltons bought into the idea of an orchard and cider operation.

Chuck remembers eating Stayman, Winesap and Grimes apples when he was growing up. A neighbor, Ronnie Toms, told him his family had a 1,500-tree orchard of 100-
year-old Albemarle Pippins in the Hungrytown area of Heard’s Mountain until they were cut down in the 1950s. In a sense, the Sheltons are just turning back the clock.

Burford thinks cider will take off when commercial orchards start producing cider varieties suited to the local climate.

“What happened in the wine industry years ago is happening in the cider industry now. There are orchardists who are realizing they can grow apples and sell them to cider makers without having any interest in making cider,” Burford said.

Vintage Virginia Apples, the Sheltons’ orchard business, now grows over 230 varieties of apples on 10 acres of trees, and many of them are varieties especially suited to local growing conditions. Chuck says the apples have informed the cider he makes.

“We tried a few of the English cider varieties and they just don’t do well for this climate or the land that we’re growing on,” Shelton said. “What does well is Winesap and Stayman and that’s another reason I think we’re more of a traditional early American cider. We’re not trying to put Kingston Black in here.”

But like Diane Flynt, Chuck Shelton doesn’t want his cider operation to be a nostalgia act. Albemarle Ciderworks markets its Jupiter’s Legacy cider with the historical narrative of Jupiter Evans, the slave who served as Jefferson’s cider maker. This year they’ll also release a Hewe’s Crab cider made entirely from apples grown in Monticello’s north orchard.

Chuck sees the history narrative as part of a larger effort to re-acquaint consumers, retailers, and chefs with really good cider.

“We’ve got to be moving on two fronts, the public demand and the knowledge of how to present it and use it,” he said. “The whole culinary history of cider needs to be redeveloped.”

Castle on a hill
Castle Hill became the area’s newest cider producer when it opened a tasting room in July. John Rhett of Rhett Architects was charged with re-developing the property––the historic estate of Colonel Thomas Walker––for its owners. It was his impetus to put in an orchard and make cider. He asked Stuart Madany to manage production.

“John had just bought some apple trees from the Sheltons not very long before and they were working on becoming a producing cidery at the time. He had gotten a fresh exposure to their apples,” Madany said. “From a landscape design point of view, he thought an orchard was more appealing and he was planting trees himself, so he said let’s investigate this.”

Enter Tom Burford. Rhett and Madany invited Tom out to look at the lay of the land and offer ideas for an orchard.

“Tom came with a couple bags of Pippins and when he first arrived he said, ‘The Albemarle Pippin returns to Castle Hill,’ and told us how the apple had first come to Albemarle County at Castle Hill,” Madany said.

Burford also told them Castle Hill would have been planted with apples as late as the 1930s.
“Tom can really sort of romance one with the intrigues of apple growing,” Madany said. “The owners said let’s go ahead.”

Castle Hill’s orchard isn’t bearing fruit yet, but they’ve already started making cider, which they sell from a tasting room for now, until their distribution permit comes. Their arrival on the cider-making scene is important in a number of ways.

There’s the fact that Rhett initially invited Gabriele Rausse to examine the site for its suitability for grape production as an agricultural application for an estate with an ownership group with deep pockets. Rausse is one of the handful of people credited with the maturation of Virginia wine-making, and he thought a vineyard would work.

Instead, and with some cajoling from Burford, Castle Hill chose to make organic apple cider through a fermenting process that uses terracotta amphorae called kvevri. The production method reflects another influence from the wine industry. Rhett had tasted the wine of Josko Gravner, who uses the method in Italy, and was won over by the idea of making cider with an ancient and green production process.

Castle Hill ciders ferment in 6′, 500-gallon kvevri that sit in the ground, which regulates their temperatures. Madany calls it “an American cider with English influences,” and said that its real character will evolve as they get more experienced using their singular method.

“We’re the only people making cider in a kvevri in the world, so our style is going to be evolving as we go,” Madany said.

Steve Wood is watching the Virginia cider scene closely from his perch in New Hampshire, because he sees the potential at the intersection of the wine and cider worlds to create locally specific varieties that have broad appeal.

“Wine is the only agricultural product I know that not only doesn’t penalize small differences between similar things but actually pays for it, actually honors it with price,” Wood said. “Nobody expects a Bordeaux variety based blend to taste or smell like one grown in Napa Valley or Southwest Australia. As a model, wine is a hopeful precedent for cider.”

To put the precedent in perspective: In 1979, when Kelso’s team was excavating Jefferson’s fruitery, there were four commercial wineries in Virginia.

Still, the hardened pro in the American cider scene, Wood said if he had to pick one path to go down for his commercial orchard—instead of pursuing three at once as he does now—he’d just plant cider varieties.

“I think the cool thing about the Virginia cider makers, there being very few of them, is they are basing their ciders chiefly on apples that they are more and more growing for the purpose of making them into cider,” Wood said.

Ben Watson, like Burford an apple bard, thinks we’re at a turning point in the American apple narrative.

“I think we’re discovering in some senses what was done 200 years ago, and on the other hand people are discovering the quality of these apples on their own and making their own decisions about how to use them,” Watson said.

Burford percolates with excitement when he talks about the future. He sees the impending danger of an industrial cider culture pumping out a “synthetic” product, on the one hand, but he also sees the potential for a new era of fine Virginia cider-making based on access to locally-grown Newtown Pippin, Winesap, Hewes Crab, and Harrison apples.

Ever the iconoclast, Burford has this to say about Thomas Jefferson: “He was very short-sighted and very selfish and I occasionally will make those remarks on the mountain and someone will get very upset, because it’s supposed to be sacred. But it’s not sacred. It’s a fact.”

But he can’t help invoking Monticello’s laird as he thinks about his own legacy.

“Just as Jefferson wanted three things on his tombstone, this would be the one apple thing that I would want: brought the Harrison apple back into cultivation,” Burford said.

Since this story ran last year, Tim Edmond and Dan Potter opened Potter’s Craft Cider. Check out this great piece on the boys over there from Beyond the Flavor.