our roots
Mountain Mac Cider Company began when Founder Conor McManus turned his 1850s Fairfax farmhouse into a makeshift cider laboratory in 2019. As told in Seven Days and the Addison Independent, those old apple trees on that property marked the beginning of our hard cider company that debuted with the support of Craft Beer Guild of Vermont.
Currently, Mountain Mac Cider is produced at Middlebury’s Happy Valley Orchard that McManus took over in 2022, a 17-acre orchard that includes a retail store and features live entertainment, homemade apple products and a variety of events.
Since launching in 2021, we’ve been committed to crafting the finest ciders with a blend of tradition and innovation. Our goal is to foster community engagement while providing plenty of opportunities to sip our unique hard cider. Now we make and sell hard cider out of our store in Middlebury with the help of our partner farms in Fairfax and Charlotte, Vermont.
Interview With All Beer Inside
Mountain Mac: the Man Behind the Cider
Mountain Mac, aka Conor McManus, grew up in the mountains of VT and NH. As the son of a logger and outdoor enthusiast, he spent much of his formative years climbing and camping in the famed Green and White Mountains.
He worked with his parents in the woods where he learned about trees and plants but also worked on local farms, orchards and vineyards until he went to college. Mac studied engineering and was part of a local vertical rescue team where he picked up the name Mountain Mac, which has stuck to this day.
From Engineering to Orchard Crafting
After a decade in the construction industry, he knew that it was time to get back to the land, so he put a plan in motion and started saving. Mac bought a 10-acre farm in Vermont, a small field and woods with an old farmhouse that hadn’t been lived in for years – and three big old apple trees. These trees brought back wonderful memories of years ago working on the old orchards.
Mac got an idea, remembering how those old New England farmers had given him their homemade backyard hard cider from their orchards that their families had run for centuries. This cider was traditional stuff, made the same way for centuries in New England from a family recipe passed down for generations. Mac had seen how these old-timers had made the cider and decided to give it a shot.
That first cider straight off the press was awful. Mac pressed ahead anyway and fermented the cider, bottled it and put it down in the root cellar of that old farm house where he forgot about it for several months.
The First Taste of Mountain Mac Cider Company
It wasn’t until he was snowed in one cold February and happened to find himself sitting by the fireplace when he remembered the cider that was still down in his root cellar. Mac pulled that first sip and was delighted. The carbonation was perfect and the flavor was excellent and, although they were not the same flavor he had remembered from his youth, they were still very good.
The following week, he decided to share a few bottles with friends and family, and so it began. Mac never did give up on reclaiming that flavor he remembered from his youth and the following year he did hundreds of small half gallon batches, taking notes and trying several different possible recipes.
Sure enough, he did find that perfect combination of fruit, yeast, time and temperature and was able to replicate the recipe, which is what we are now drinking today in every glass of Mountain Mac Cider.