A fruit basket in the already agriculturally abundant Pacific Northwest, wild and domesticated trees dot the highways that saunter through Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. It’s from these trees — the fruit trees of neighbors, forgotten orchards of owners past, feral arboreal along the lazy turnpikes — that Eaglemount Wine & Cider got its start. From the basement of an original homestead house and property, Trudy and Jim Davis began their home cider production from the heirloom apples founds on the centenarian orchard, supplementing the modest crop with community-sourced fruit. Winter Banana, Jonathan, Roxbury Russet and more went into these first ciders, and are today complemented with a cultivated orchard of French and English cider apple varieties.
A slight side-step from the more traditionally made, apple-dominant products, Eaglemount bottles up its Raspberry Hopped cider, a semi-sweet cider infused with raspberry and dry-hopped with seven different hop varieties. Organic estate heirloom apples are fermented and later blended with raspberries from the property and a neighboring farm, bringing together a lush, fruit-forward and savory bottle. Raspberry seed, rosemary and even mint aromas pops and fuse with the berry and apple base, zested with a touch of citrus in the dry finish.