Hollow Ridge Orchard will press its first cider of the year on Saturday, about two weeks earlier than usual, after a warm August ripened the early varieties ahead of schedule.
“Ginger Golds came in on the twenty-fourth,” said Ada Pruitt, who runs the orchard with her brother Wes. “I have been here thirty-one years and I have never picked a Ginger Gold in August.”
A smaller crop, a sweeter one
The orchard expects to be down roughly 15 percent by volume, the result of a late frost on May 9 that caught the Macouns and most of the Cortlands in bloom. What survived, though, sized up well in a dry summer and is running two to three points higher in sugar than last year.
Less juice, better juice. If you are making cider that is not the worst trade in the world. If you are selling apples by the pound it is a bad year.
Ada Pruitt
What is in the blend
The Pruitts do not press a single variety. The early-season blend is roughly half Ginger Gold and McIntosh for acidity, a quarter Golden Delicious for sugar, and the rest a shifting mix of whatever is ripe — this year including a small amount of Ashmead’s Kernel from twelve old trees at the top of the hill.
- Press days: Saturdays and Wednesdays through the first week of November
- Sweet cider available at the farm stand and the Water Street market
- Pick-your-own opens September 19, later than the press because the good picking varieties ripen after
- Hard cider from the 2025 pressing is released October 4
The trees at the top of the hill
The twelve Ashmead’s Kernel trees were planted by the Pruitts’ grandfather in 1961 and produce, in a good year, about nine bushels total. The fruit is small, russeted, and by every commercial standard unsellable.
“It is the best apple on this farm and we cannot give it away,” Wes Pruitt said. “So it goes in the cider and people say, what is different about this year’s cider. That is what.”
Hollow Ridge is at 1180 Orchard Road, open daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.