Cidermaker and owner of Sunshine Coast Cider, Martin Rellstab knows his apples and what is required to make good Cider. He’s a master fruit grower of 18 years and a Cidermaker with a tradition going back 25 generations. He knows how to grow apples, but he also knows what it means when your crop gets destroyed by natural disasters like hail or frost, when you struggle to get pickers, or when your fruit is rejected because of artificial quality requirements.
Because of this understanding of apple growing, we only work with a few selected farmers. We know them personally and visit them several times a year, as we want to know what happens on the farm. And of course, we want to be there when they have the juiciest, most flavoursome fruit. Great Cider starts in the orchard. To make the best Cider, we need the best apples and the best apples are grown in Queensland with its abundance of sunshine.
We always seek out the heritage varieties as well as the ugly fruit. We don’t care how the apples look, but they must be tasty, juicy, ripe and full of flavour.
It has been very tough for growers in recent years. Drought, fire, hail, COVID, frost and labour shortage are just a few of the obstacles put in their way. We want our farmers to be around now and into the future – our business relies on it, as we can only make delicious Cider if we can buy those flavoursome Queensland apples in the future. It’s for this reason that we try to support our farmers as much as we can. We ran a fundraiser after the 2019 bushfires, but we also realised that the best way to help the farmers is to buy their apples at a fair price. And this is what we do – using 100% Queensland apples to make delicious Cider.
https://www.sunshinecoastcider.com.au/