ROOTS

We’ve always been passionate about bringing people together and celebrating local food & drink.

Throughout our careers in food and farming, and now fermenting and cidermaking, the core of our philosophy has always been about honouring real food and past traditions.

Windswept Farm is a picturesque 100 acre parcel situated at the gateway to the Bruce Peninsula in South Georgian Bay. You can find us in the heart of apple country perched high on the Niagara Escarpment between the Beaver and Big Head River Valleys.

Most of the farm has been pasture for the better part of the last century, and the soil is rich in biodiversity, a buzzing ecosystem filled with microorganisms which all play an essential part of our unique terroir.

Our fieldstone hedgerows are full of wild seedling apple trees, and at the centre of the property is the old homestead orchard with apples and plums and a rare old grove of wild pears.

Over the past several years we’ve grafted several hundred European and heirloom cider apple and pear trees. We chose hardy semi standard stock, able to withstand our windswept landscape and root themselves in our rich but challenging soil structure.

We chose this region, partly because of its long history of apple production, dating back to original plantings on the Meaford tank range in the late 1800’s. In these days there were thousands of unique apple varieties, most have since been long forgotten and otherwise lost.

As we've gotten to know our local landscape, we've discovered an abundance of wild seedling trees, descendants of those long forgotten apple varieties. A few of which bear many of the characteristics we seek for cider - bitterness, tannin, complex aromas and flavours – naturally revealing the beauty of the Georgian Bay region.