Nellysford
Nelson County, Virginia
Back in the summer of 2011 we told you about the progress on Nelson County’s first hard cider company, Bold Rock. Since that time they’ve had several expansions including the largest back in 2013. That’s when the current production facility and large tasting room on the hill were built.
“It’s an Innovation / Barrell Room. The unique part of this is it’s the original barn that John and I first built when John and I built when we first decided to do cider here. And so for the first two years of our existence of Bold Rock we did everything out of this barn. And what is now that little entranceway and the toilets were once our office and John and his wife and I sat there for years in the offices and did what we had to do. So in a way it’s sort of a coming of age and back to the past, and revitalize this whole barn. It’s a very interesting place for visitors to come,” Brian tells Marcie.
Above listen to Marcie’s compete interview with Brian Shanks about all of the very neat additions being made at Bold Rock.
What we want to do here really is concentrate on making some very unique and unusual ciders. We’ve done the hard yards and now we want to have fun producing ciders. We’re looking at the possibility of putting in a small still and doing fortified ciders. It opens up a whole new range and we can keep it separately from our mainstream cider making up in the main cidery. So it’s just a place we can have some fun, experiment, and do things and also return to history. I feel really near when I come and stand here because this is where we started and now we can put some of the most interesting ciders that are going to be available here,” Brian says.
Brian tells us the retail space up front is ready now, but the barrel area in the back won’t be completes for several more weeks with hopes to be making lots of unique ciders there in time for Christmas.”As you can see, we’ve go the front part of it working now. The retail part of it’s working even though the building’s not quite finished on the front. But the rest of it we’re aiming to get cleared out and our equipment, barrels and tanks and have our own little bottling plant here and hopefully a still. That will all be arriving in the first two weeks of November. Hopefully in producing of some interesting things coming out of here in production before Christmas in December.”
In addition to the new Innovation and Barrel Room, Bold Rock held their 2nd Annual Fall Festival this past weekend.
Marcie grabbed lots of shot from that while there chatting with Brian.
