Photo by Gary Symons
Scenic Road Cider Sign
A diverse mix of apples and occupations – it all comes together beautifully in award-winning cider and growing innovation.
A court reporter, a pharmacist, a commercial pilot and a VP of business development walk into an orchard… and no, it’s not the start of a joke.
It’s the genesis of an award-winning cidery – Kelowna-based Scenic Road Cider Company – which is firstly a story of friends coming together and secondly a story of ideas and growth.
Photos by Gary Symons
Scenic Cider
Harv and Marina Johal and Taylor and Caroline Sebastien.
Marina and Harv Johal bought eight acres on Packinghouse Road off Scenic Road (yes it’s actually named Scenic Road) about four years ago. With four acres planted in dessert apples, the orchard was already leased to Caroline and Taylor Sebastian. The Johals intended to continue to leave the four acres of orchards with Honey Crisp, Gala, Ambrosia and Spartan, but also to look at other ideas for the property.
“There’s a packing house on our site,” Harv says. “The original farm was much larger. Probably two, three thousand acres. For whatever reason, this packing house ended up on our eight acre parcel.”
Harv went to the city to see if the building could be torn down and replaced because he’d been told that approach was easier than making use of the existing building. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an option.
“I found out we wouldn’t be able to build anything there,” he says. “Once I found that out it became much more important to Marina and me to do something with that building. She didn’t like my man cave idea.”
Turns out, Taylor already had an idea taking hold that didn’t involve a man cave – more like an apple cave.
“Taylor had been checking into growing cider fruit,” Caroline says. “He’d been researching, going all over the place, looking at property.”
The two men starting talking about options. Taylor’s desire to make cider combined with Harv’s need to do something with the building, which led to a conversation with their wives in early 2015. Prior to that, to push his interests forward, Taylor had taken a cider making course; though interestingly, his passion is in the growing, not the making.
“He came back and basically said, ‘we’re probably capable of doing this, it doesn’t take a PhD,” notes Harv. “In April 2015 we put in the formal application. July 2015 we would have gotten the approval or pending approval and then in September we had the final inspection to say we were good to go and then the final milestone would have been June 2016.”
Marina and Caroline took the cider making course in July 2015, production of cider began in fall 2015 with the doors open to the public in June 2016.
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Photo by Gary Symons
Scenic Cider Bottles
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Photo by Gary Symons
Scenic Cider Awards
So just how does this group segment the work? Ultimately, the tasks sort themselves out.
“We all have brought certain skills to the table that are very complimentary,” says Harv. “Taylor’s been in the orcharding business for 10-plus years and also grew up on an orchard.”
Caroline takes care of cider making and finance, while Marina is the other cider maker and manages operations. Harv manages sales and marketing while also supporting the others. While life on the farm is a far cry from their day jobs and former day jobs, those experiences have contributed.
“I think people are drawn to the story that four friends came together and created something,” Harv says. “Overall we’ve been quite happy with our success. We’ve created a good, high-quality product and doubled our production in our second year.”
“We just wanted to use up all the apples,” Marina adds.
Before the cidery was built Marina and Harv tried to make use of those extra apples in a unique way. They call it Applepalooza and it began as an invitation to friends and family.
“The first year was a housewarming when friends and family picked all the apples,” notes Marina. “Then the following year we grew into mobile juicing… we did that for the next two years and last year was the first time with the cidery. We invite other cideries.”
September 23 marked this year’s Applepalooza at Scenic Road with food vendors, a pop-up liquor store and tastings. Some of those tastings included the three Scenic Road varieties: Dry, Nearly Dry and Razz.
All have been award winners.
“There were two different submissions,” Marina explains of the awards. “One was the Portland International Cider Cup. We received two bronze [one for Dry and one for Nearly Dry as Razz hadn’t been created yet]. Great Lake International Cider and Perry Competition, we received a silver for all three.”
A new variety is on the horizon – possibly another berry cider. But the apples will always be the key. Caroline and Taylor now manage close to 20 acres of orchards planted with the dessert apples as well as cider apples like Kingston Black, Michelin and Yarlington Mill. In fact, Marina notes there are eight or nine apple varieties in each type of apple cider.
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Photo by Gary Symons
Caroline in the cidery
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Photo by Gary Symons
Marina at the bar
Not all the apples grown make it to cider mind you. Caroline notes about 75 per cent are grown for fresh market with the remainder going into cider. On the cider side, the balance of sales is a similar ratio with about 30 per cent being sold as farm gate and 70 per cent being sold in retail locations through distributors in B.C. and Alberta.
The business is growing and changing all the time, so it surprised Harv that most cideries use unsophisticated tools to keep track of the business.
“We want to get our business to more of an annual business and take out the highs and lows,” Harv says of why he was exploring trends. Understanding trends was frustrating and manual. “The more I delved into it, the more I realized from the business perspective there could be an opportunity.”
Now Harv’s idea of a cidery software system is being tested at Scenic Road. It tracks the process from beginning-to-end.
“I think we’ve been very fortunate,” Harv summarizes. “We’re based in the Okanagan which equates to apples. In 2014 we were just a couple with two jobs living our life and then we bought an orchard, started a cidery, started a software company.”
It’s not easy creating a cidery, but four friends of varied backgrounds came together to make it work. Of course, there was also the benefit of a packinghouse that stubbornly refused to be torn down.