APPLES & PEARS

PHOTO BY MARK C. ANDERSON

Local cider makers offer the perfect fall ferment

An operation like Pacific Grove CiderWorks is hard to find.

Think about it. Who else in the area, the state or the country crafts these types of ciders and perrys, let alone a pear port?

Unscientific research reveals only one other pear port maker in the country. U.S. Open Cider Championship Director Dow Scoggins has only heard of a couple. In fact, PGCW co-owners Tim Calvert and Christie Monson registered their own name for it, “Brandipera,” as a trademark with the U.S. patents office because they were traversing new territory.

Calvert spoke to the novelty of what they’re doing when PGCW debuted in autumn 2020. “The cider industry has a long way to go, but it’s improving,” Calvert says. “There’s so little local cider and so many people who don’t know it yet.”

While elusive in the world of beverages, an outfit like Pacific Grove CiderWorks is also hard to find geographically. CiderWorks’ world headquarters—which houses a tasting room, French oak barrels, bottling gear and fermentation tanks—nestles into a slot in the Russell Service Center. The commercial park also is home to businesses like Cesar Upholstery, Dority Roofing and Peninsula Potters; when I first went looking for it, CiderWorks’ teal flag was obscured by a plumbing truck.

That blue-collar location, it turns out, proves appropriate. Like many of its neighbors, 1,500-square-foot PGCW is a handmade mom-and-pop. Cidermaker Calvert, who comes to this after a three-decade career as a veterinarian, built pretty much the entire shop, from the four-stool tasting bar to the production area door.

He’s into ciders because, as a kid, he spent a lot of time at his family’s Placer County orchard amidst apple trees, cows and sheep. There, his great-great-grandpa started using a press to make hard juice in the 1860s. Calvert still has—and on occasion still uses—the very same press. He started making his own hard cider in buckets with apples from the ranch. He even opened a cider tasting shop in Colfax that keyed him in to different styles and the saison yeast he swears by.

Calvert estimates they’ve spent $4 on their “marketing plan,” not including the sandwich board reading “Cider Tasting: Hard Cider and Pear Port” and the balloons they tie to it.

Asilomar’s foggy cool climate happens to be ideal for producing and aging quality ciders.

The location also fits because Asilomar’s foggy cool climate happens to be ideal for producing and aging quality ciders.

“You want a cellar climate,” Calvert says, “and that’s what you have in PG.”

Finally, Pacific Grove feels storybook because it allows Calvert to collaborate with his high school sweetheart, Monson, a retired teacher, author and now co-owner and “head cider taster” for PGCW. They reunited in 2011 after 40 years apart.

“We look at possibilities and make decisions together,” she says. “I guess we appreciate each other so much and the different talents we have, and work together really well no matter what we’re doing.”

On a suitably foggy afternoon, they tour my big sister—part of the aforementioned population unfamiliar with cider—and I through their range of drinks. The $10 tastings involve a dry, mellow and light apple saison, an authentically pear-y perry, a sparkling pear cider and two vintages of Brandipera.

It’s a memorable lineup, highlighted by the low-ABV sparkling, with its hints of buttery biscuit, and the seductive 2016 Brandipera and its overlays of butterscotch. I can’t resist buying a bottle of the former ($19). My sister takes home a bottle of the 2016 pear port ($49), which won a gold medal at the 2020 U.S. Open Cider Championship.

During the tasting, I ask Calvert what his great-great-grandpa would think if he could see us sniffing and sipping. A smile peeks from behind a mustache curtain. “He’d be thrilled,” Calvert says.

Pacific Grove CiderWorks hosts tastings noon–5pm Saturday, noon–4pm Sundays and by appointment at 2050 Sunset Drive in Pacific Grove. More at pgciderworks.com.