Fraser Valley Cider Company is a Langley craft cider company. Founder Rachel Bolongaro planted an orchard of 1800 heritage apple trees on an empty 12-acre lot in Langley in 2014. With over 25 different varieties of english and french cider apples, they grow the types of apples that make the highest quality cider. Their handcrafted ciders are made in small batches using traditional techniques and freshly pressed BC Apples, including those from their orchard, and dessert apples from Kelowna. Specialties include a honey cider made using the farm’s own bee hives and a sparkling bone-dry cider.
Question: How are you supporting other local businesses?
Answer: We support other local farms and artisan-type businesses. We always try to rely on companies with similar values to ours. As much as we can, we look to work with businesses with a similar alignment of values – those with ethical production practices, that are family owned, small businesses, who make quality, hand crafted products. And we only buy from them if they’re nice people. 🙂
We use local supplies for our products whenever possible. Our apples are local, and they are 80-90% of our ingredients. All the other fruits we use for flavourings are B.C. grown too. We get out bottles from a Canadian company in Quebec. They are specialized for our product, and we can’t get them anywhere else.
We also support many local service providers. About 90% of our service purchasing is from local suppliers and most of them are right here with us in Langley. A Creative Team creates our labels and our branding, we use CM Accounting, and we use Direct Tap-a young, enthusiastic start-up from Vancouver-for our warehousing and delivery services.
Question: What social and environmental practices are you proud of?
Answer: We’re proud that we turned derelict land into an orchard with 3000 trees! We make a natural product – our cider is 100% natural, with no preservatives and no chemicals. We farm holistically at our orchard. We have chickens for fertilizer, we treat our orchard as if it were organic but haven’t pursued the certification.
We’re proud of growing the roles of our staff. We’ve helped people move from server to doing more of the administration for the business. It’s very important to us that we treat our staff well, and for us to make meaningful jobs for them. The fact that people return year after year tells me that we’re doing something right.
We love bringing the community together with events. In the past, we’ve done regular Longtable Dinners to support local food producers and musicians. Our Chef Adrian Beaty has a food truck at the cidery, and he provides amazing food from local producers that really compliment our ciders. We seat 60 people, have a local musicians, and people have a great time. We’ve also done a Community Press event where people bring their spare apples and we make a batch of cider together, and share what we produce. We support a number of community causes, often donating products to silent auctions and other events.
