New Cider Association President

New Cider Association President. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Pete Mulligan with Bull Run Cider in Forest Grove, Oregon is the new president of the Northwest Cider Association. He got his start making cider about 4 years ago.

MULLIGAN: For me it started out back in 2010 at the first Portland Fermentation Festival where I met someone who was really passionate about cider and doing this and it sounded like a good thing. I’ve always been into the idea of making a value added product and so just started getting more involved and going to Cider School in Mount Vernon.

Mulligan and his cidery, Bull Run, was involved in the Fifth Annual Cider Summit in Seattle this past weekend. Many new cider makers gleaned their apples from parks and residences where apples were growing to start. That is changing for Mulligan.

MULLIGAN: We are growing a lot of apples. This industry and the way things are growing, you can’t grow enough apples and so we buy apples from Yakima to the Willamette Valley all the way to Hood River. We buy juice just trying to keep up with demand right now. Four years ago there were about 10 cider companies in the association. Now there’s over 45 so the growth is creating competition for the apples. What we have to do is get the industry caught up to what the demand is and meet the demand and there’s a lot of opportunities out there to do that. Recently the Northwest Cider Association received a grant from the Oregon Department of Agriculture and it’s really to promote the standards and promote what cider is.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.