Meet Patrick Newson and Wayne Beckwith, the owners of Riverblend Cider Company. Their ciders are handmade with minimal intervention throughout the process from bud to bottle. They use native yeasts to naturally ferment the fruit they gather and bottle without filtration. Riverblend is one of our new vendors through our Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP) that is funded by the USDA, and they will be selling at the market, starting this month!
Patrick and Wayne leaned into the craft of cider making when they got back into farming during the pandemic. As a child Patrick started working for some family friends in their orchards at Riverbend Farm, a long-standing vendor at the market. More than twenty years later he returns to Riverbend Farm with Wayne, and they start experimenting with pressing cider as well growing berries, vegetables, and exotic fruits like yuzu. What started as a labor of love between close pals quickly grew into something bigger as they learned that this was a project they wanted to pursue at a higher level. In 2022 they created Riverbend Cider Company and are now processing and bottling their cider in Territorial Vineyards’s facilities rather than a friend’s garage.
Currently, they are working on growing peppers and berries to make value-added products that they plan to sell at the market and in stores. For Patrick and Wayne, being part of the FMPP program has been a great way to lower the barrier of entry to selling at the market with free access to resources, materials, and workshops along with the ongoing support of our market community. Outside of Riverbend Farm they work with 5 other orchards in the area including King’s Estate Winery in sourcing apples for the cider. They practice zero-waste methodology in making their cider by using grape stems from their pressing facilities instead of straw to create a channel in the presser and later transport the pomace, the by-product from pressing apples to My Brother’s Farm for hog feed. Eventually, Patrick and Wayne would like to find some land where they can plan fruit trees of their own.
You can find Patrick and Wayne’s cider at some of Eugene’s local restaurants and bars such as Meiji, Party Bar, Bar Purlieu, and Crow and Cart as well as grocery stores like the Kiva, Sundance, Capella, and Market of Choice. Come try a sip of their cider at LCFM’s Holiday Market.