WildCraft Cider Works will close its Eugene cider bar soon. But it’s opening another location in Yachats next month.
Sean Kelly, the owner of WildCraft, said he came up with the name for his cidery on New Year’s Day of 2013. Walking on the beach in Yachats, he found a piece of driftwood.
“Here I am trying to drag this heavy piece of exotic hardwood up the rocks and in the struggle to get it up,” he said. “I just said under my breath, ‘wild craft’.”
The cider business got started that year in Eugene and they sold their first keg of cider to Friendly Street Market in September of 2014. For Kelly, it’s always been about sourcing local fruit, and collecting from community members.
“Our method of cider making is unique in the sense of engaging the community in the harvest and utilizing abandoned fruit, or old orchards, the documentation of old orchards and creating unique more story-based ciders,” said Kelly.
You can find a story with each cider WildCraft makes. One is their Mount Pisgah Heirloom 2020 which is described as a “single origin cider that reflects an historical tract of land at the base of Eugene’s Mt. Pisgah.”
Now, ten years later, Kelly said costs for bottles and other equipment have gone up and his business is still feeling the effects of the pandemic. He also can’t afford to stay in their building on Lincoln Alley in Eugene’s Whiteaker neighborhood. So he wants to scale back.
Kelly and his friend Nathan Bernard announced this summer that they plan to open a WildCraft location at the previous home of Bernard’s Yachats Brewing.
Kelly said that location will be WildCraft Cider and Pantry, with a taphouse, bottle shop, and various packaged fermented foods for sale. They’ll also have a food menu that’s being developed by Tiffany Norton, the chef at Party Bar in Eugene.
“I’m so looking forward to being smaller scale again and re-growing it from that passion and from the roots,” said Kelly.
And Kelly said there’s a sense of coming full circle from that moment on the beach in Yachats when he thought of the name WildCraft.
He said it will be sad to leave this Eugene location. He and friends built much of the interior out of lumber from the north bottomlands Mount Pisgah restoration.
“There’s this warmth here,” he said. “There’s been memorials, weddings and educational events. All kinds of community sharing has taken place here.”
Kelly told KLCC WildCraft is not completely leaving Eugene.
He plans to continue with their community apple drive program. And they’re still connected to local orchards in the valley.
“There are some pieces of property that we’ve dedicated a lot of heart into building this relationship and uncovering its history and the community apple drive has been so great for people here as well. And that program must continue,” he said. “So there will always be somewhere for fruit collection here.”
But he said he’s excited about the new ciders that may come from coastal orchards.
“And, every day, I’m making new connections of old orchards that are up in the area,” he said. “So, we’re going to have a brand new profile, eventually, coming this year, of this coastal terroir.”
WildCraft Cider Works will have one final farewell to its Eugene location on Oct. 5 with its 10th Anniversary Harvest Party. It will also be a fundraiser to help support the new Yachats location.
“I gotta just thank my friends because, without their support, we wouldn't have a future or an opportunity to keep this alive,” said Kelly.
