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Lost Valley Cider Co. (408 W Florida Street) is a tasting room and store founded by father and daughter team Stuart and Chandra Rudolph that’s been catering to cider fans a little over two years on the ground level of the Brix apartment lofts in Walker’s Point.
“My daughter has a gluten intolerance, so we started making cider at home about six or seven years ago and fell in love with that experience,” Stuart Rudolph explains, adding he had previous experience homebrewing beer and making wine. Stuart and Chandra began to study ciders from around the Midwest and the country.
“There are some places that are considered a mecca of cider, so we went to look at some of those places—Portland, Ore., Seattle, on the east coast there’s spots in Virginia and New England where ciders started to take off earlier than other parts of the country,” he says.
Stuart and Chandra began to work on a business plan and found a spot in the Brix building, a former candy factory. Materials from the old building, like an old fire door, are part of the interior design.
Lost Valley is a combination tasting room and bottle shop, where you can choose from about 80 cans and bottles that can be enjoyed on site or to go. Last year, the company began brewing their own cider with a cidermaker in Madison following their recipes for both whiskey barrel and rum barrel aged ciders, as well as their bestselling cider, called Currant Affair, made with Midwest apples, a touch of hops, and Wisconsin black currants, but “just a little bit because we believe you should still be able to taste the apples,” Rudolph explains.
The menu also includes cider-based cocktails, and if your companions aren’t that into cider they have a good selection of craft beer, wine, mead, kombucha and a full-service liquor bar. Regular events include periodic adult spelling bees, and tarot and henna nights.
For those not well versed in cider, Rudolph recommends finding the person’s taste scale from dry to sweet, trying an “Apple-forward cider,” and from there moving to a fruity or savory herb infused selection. “Once you know a person’s sweetness level, you can usually get them in a right direction,” Rudolph states. “A good cider is one that has some complexity to it, it’s not just sugary apple, in my opinion. Now that doesn’t mean a good cider can’t be a sweet cider, the ciders we offer range from very dry to agreeably sweet.”
Rudolph says future goals for Lost Valley include continuing to sell their brand of ciders to other bars and restaurants, and they are looking to start packaging next year in cans. Eventually they’d like to see another Lost Valley location with food that can be paired to ciders. But how is Lost Valley doing in a city so traditionally known for beer?
“I think there’s a good contingency of people looking for something new and adventurous,” Rudolph says of local cider drinkers. “We think of the beer world as our friends and we can live in this space together because we are offering something different. Just look at the popularity of the craft beer industry and the emerging popularity of sour beer, barrel aged beer, cider kind of fits into that part of the adult beverage industry where people are looking to try something different.”
Lost Valley Cider Co. is located at 408 W. Florida St. Their website is www.lostvalley.com. Their next Adult Spelling Bee is Oct. 4 at 7:30 p.m.
This article is part of Shepherd Express' 2018 Fall Drink Week, which runs Sept. 10-16. Fall Drink Week is brought to you by Discount Liquor. Read more of our Fall Drink Week coverage here.
