Reminiscing on the Last Eight Years

Hi, Jeff Parrish here, co-founder of Portland Cider Company with my wife, Lynda. Eight years ago, our lives changed forever—in the best possible way. But this tale goes back even further, all the way to 1995.

My introduction to cider began with a trip to Trader Joe’s as I scouted alcohol for my brother’s bachelor party. I stumbled upon 40-ounce bottles of Woodchuck Cider. I had never tasted cider—all I knew was that it was made from apples and it was alcohol. I liked it. A few years later, I discovered English cider via Strongbow, which was being distributed here in the states. It was drier, more tannic than what I had been drinking, and delicious—and I found my cider tastes evolving.

Fast forward to the early 2000s, when I made my way to Victoria, BC, and ended up at a small estate-cidery called Merridale. It was there that I tasted my first genuine scrumpy—a type of farmhouse cider with a serious kick that originated in the West of England and is commonly sold at English roadside farmstands. Scrumpy is essentially a high-alcohol, uncarbonated, rough facsimile of hooch made from stolen apples.

I fell in love, hard and fast. I couldn’t find anything like it here in Portland, so a trip to Merridale became an annual pilgrimage. For several years I would travel hundreds of miles, load up my car, and bring enough scrumpy back to Portland to last through the year. The travel became prohibitive, and I started to dabble with cidermaking at home.

In 2007, I fell in love in a more traditional sense—with Lynda. I am a born and bred Oregonian, while Lynda is native to the region of Somerset, England—the scrumpy motherland. In the summer of 2008, we visited Lynda’s hometown. We toured local pubs, cideries and orchards where I tasted many more scrumpies, along with other varieties of English cider. Honestly, the entire trip was a bit of a drunken blur; fortunately, Lynda took good notes, and we learned all about the process of making cider in the English tradition.

Upon our return, I continued my cidermaking hobby with Lynda’s help, crafting small five-gallon test batches in our guest room closet. It was just for fun, but the cider became increasingly popular with our family and friends. Eventually, we were producing nearly a hundred gallons a year out of our home. We both enjoyed the cider drinking culture that was developing in Portland at the time, and we saw it was gaining traction. Lynda and I realized this passion project had become something more, so we decided to take the plunge and start a commercial operation. We left our corporate jobs in 2012 to commit our full attention to creating what would become Portland Cider Company. 

We’d love to tell you our choices for the company name and the iconic red apple logo were due to our marketing prowess, but honestly, it fell into our lap. The name “Portland Cider Company” was available and we knew it would be recognized locally, so we ran with it. We met with some freelance designers we found on CraigsList and reviewed concepts for the logo—our gut instinct kept coming back to the red apple and CIDER in all caps. We had no idea at the time how iconic that red apple would become to our brand!

In 2013, we launched with a small tasting room offering just six taps at a space in Oregon City. From the very beginning, we were committed to making real, authentic cider using 100% Northwest apples without additives, colors, or added sugar for a clean and crisp authentic cider. Our first batches were pressed and packed by hand—we’d press apples for two straight days to fill a single 1000-gallon tank. We turned to family and friends for help; Lynda’s parents even immigrated from England to the U.S. in 2013 to assist with the beginning stages of the cidery. From washing kegs, to store tastings, to peddling cider at farmers’ markets, they became an integral part of the company.

In 2015, we opened our second taphouse in a 1,300-square-foot location at 3638 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The Portland Cider House represented the ideal blend of the cider-making traditions of Somerset, England, with the eclectic and oddly unique spirit of cider-passionate Portland. The Taphouse remains a popular destination in Portland today for locals and tourists alike, serving our ciders, along with guest options from regional craft cidermakers, from 30 taps.

Demand continued to grow for our flagship and seasonal ciders, and in 2016 we made a big move—both literally and figuratively. We invested around $1 million to increase the size of the production space and capacity tenfold by relocating our production facility from Oregon City to a 20,000-square-foot warehouse in Clackamas. The new location allowed us the headway to produce over 1.5 million gallons of cider annually if necessary. We added a tasting room where customers could enjoy an assortment of Portland Cider Company products on tap. It was crazy to think that in just four years, we had grown from five-gallon batches in a guest room closet to this impressive cider-making facility! The rapid growth is something we never could have imagined, but we were thrilled to find a community of people who embraced our ciders.

Eight years is a long time for a small business to survive, and it’s still surreal to us both how something that started as a hobby has grown into the company it is today. When Lynda and I decided to go all-in back in 2012, the cider category was growing like crazy. Four years later, when we expanded to Clackamas, the category was starting to slow down and become saturated. That was the closest we ever came to wondering if we were going to make it. But we worked a little harder, planned properly and learned from the experience. We grew this company from a tiny taproom to a successful regional brand by cultivating something we both love. We’re incredibly proud to have received nearly 100 awards for our ciders and taprooms over the years, including being named Best Cider House and Best Cidery in Portland. 

Portland Cider Company was founded on the belief that good cider comes from good fruit, honest practices, attention to detail, and passion for what we are doing. Lynda and I instill integrity, pride and love in every facet of our company, and while our Portland Cider family has grown tremendously since we began eight years ago, our values, dedication, and quality have stayed the same. Cider has been a part of our family for years and we are still excited to share our love for cider with our customers in every bottle, can and keg we produce—it’s in our roots!

From the bottom of our hearts, we want to thank our fans for supporting us these past eight years; you are incredible and we wouldn’t be where we are today without you. And to those who have yet to try Portland Cider, we say, “Drink it. It’s good!”

All our best,

Jeff & Lynda