Albemarle Cider Works

At Albemarle Cider Works, you won’t find your average pick-your-own orchard. They have a fascinating philosophy and vision for their orchard business, which is explained in detail here.

“Vintage Virginia Apples was founded in 2000 by the Shelton family. In our orchard, we grow a variety of tree fruits that are becoming increasingly rare. Many of these are older varieties that have fallen into obscurity or just do not fit the needs of today’s commercial marketing and distribution systems. We began by planting a small array of interesting apples, which has grown now to more than 200 different cultivars, both heirloom and more recent varieties.

We have also experimented with growing a variety of other fruits including peaches, pears and plums. Our nursery has grown from this love of vintage varieties, which we aim to share with like-minded orchardists by offering over 100 varieties of fruit trees from our collection through our fall/winter catalog which we post online each fall.  Many of these varieties are virtually unobtainable elsewhere.

While apples are our primary focus here at Rural Ridge Orchard, we also enjoy growing for our own use other tree fruits that have merit and distinction and are difficult to find today. For the connoisseur, seeking them out is rewarding and worthwhile. Our enthusiasm has led us to collect pears that we think may grow well in the mid-Atlantic, peaches, plums, apricots, quince and the old Black Heart Cherry which is almost impossible to find these days. We propagate a selection of these fruits every year to sell to the discriminating enthusiast as well as our apples.

Many of these do not ship well, have a relatively short shelf life or other attributes that make them difficult to fit into the industrial agricultural system and mass distribution food market that dominates our food chain supply these days. The efficiency of this pattern is unparalleled and as a nation, we eat better and more cheaply than virtually anywhere in the world. Yet the price we pay is the decline of many of the special and varied flavors that come from plums such as the Green Gage and peaches like George IV, White Champion, Peregrine, and Elberta.  We sell these fruits at the farm in season.  They are often in very limited supply. “