Nathan Zucker
Brandon Cline and Katherine Vance
In a nondescript warehouse on Elm Hill Pike, near the cluster of trucks that ferry commerce up and down Fesslers Lane, a small business bubbles away.
It’s a fermented duet, nurtured by Katherine Vance and Brandon Cline, who turn regional apples into the golden glory of hard cider.
You can’t get more “bootstrapping” in business than finding two partners who do everything themselves. And that’s right where Brightwood Craft Cider is since launching to the public in January.
The birth of this small business is refreshing since it’s one that aims for early organic growth rather than the splash of ventures buoyed by big wads of cash.
Vance and Cline met in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the scent of cideries perfume the air. They fell in love with the dry, crisp styles of Potter’s Craft Cider.
Nathan Zucker
While most fermenters start with homebrewing beer, Vance and Cline looked first to foods, learning to make yogurt, kimchee, sourdough breads, and kombucha. Finally, after moving to Nashville and seeing a nearly cider-less landscape, they decided to try their hand with apples.
That started with a trip to cider school at Cornell University to learn the vagaries of apples, sugars, yeasts, and water. They experimented with 60 versions, mixing and matching apple blends with different yeasts, before they settled on their first release. They now join Diskin as the second cidery to open in Nashville.
“We’ve tried a lot of different apples. Our current blend includes Winesap, Arkansas Black, Pink Lady, Gold Delicious, and Granny Smith. A lot has to do with what did well that year in the orchards,”
says Vance, pointing to the different plastic totes that contain the various projects.
They source their apples from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia, as well as Tennessee, working with farmers like Chuck McSpadden at Apple Valley down the road in Cleveland where Vance grew up.
The orchards have more capacity to press the apples than Brightwood does, so they send the juice to Nashville where it’s blended and paired with the yeast Vance and Cline think will work best to produce the perfect flavor profile.
After fermentation, the juice is aged, allowing for the aromas to develop and the flavor to deepen. It’s then carbonated before bottling in 750 milliliter wine bottles and in small kegs for taprooms around town.
Nathan Zucker
As a small business operating within the confines of Davidson County, the duo can distribute and sell their product without going through a middleman distributor. Of course, that means they have to make the product and market it, as well as knock on doors, sell it, and deliver it to each customer.
For now they only have a handful of outlets, mostly taprooms and restaurants—but with clients like City House and Husk, it’s clear their quality passes muster.
The “Down the Way” blend currently offered is a light, golden color, very crisp, and much drier than your average supermarket hard cider, with an alcohol content of 6.8-percent ABV. It retails for $14 to $16 per bottle and goes well with barbecue and other dishes that pair well with crisp wines.