Ten Years of Swilled Dog

Ten years ago we took the leap and jumped into the world of the unknown by launching a cidery from our basement in small town West Virginia.

We had a basement, apples, a mountain, a trailer, and a border collie who insisted on supervising. Everything else we figured out as we went, usually the hard way, usually on weekends or late at night.

That border collie is Lucy Pickles. She was born in a Tennessee puppy mill, was sent to a shelter in New Orleans when it got shut down, and went through eight homes in seven months before she got to us. She was scheduled to be euthanized when a rescue group pulled her out in time. We were her ninth home and the one that stuck.

She is the reason giving back to animals has never been something we added on later. It was built in from the beginning, because she was here from the beginning.

Ten years feels like the right time to go back through the photos. Here is how it actually happened.

It started on a piece of notebook paper

Before there was a label or a bottle or a single customer, there was this. A tree, a dog reaching for an apple, and two words we hoped somebody might remember.

It is not a fancy drawing. It was never meant to be. But the dog under the apple tree has been on every bottle we have made since. That dog is Lucy.

We built it ourselves

Framing the basement. Cutting panels in the driveway in July.

We took our basement, framed the walls, ran the wire, and cut the insulated panels in the driveway on a pair of sawhorses in the middle of July.

There is a version of this story where a company writes a check and a contractor shows up. That is not our version. Most of what you see in these photos was built by family on days off, and a few things were rebuilt twice after we learned why the first way does not work.

The first production room, and the first two fermenters.

Two fermenters, still in the plastic, sitting in a room that had been a garage a few months earlier. That was the whole operation. When we look at these photos now, the thing that stands out is how much empty floor there was, how quickly it filled up, and how quickly we ran out of room.

Apples, everywhere

Apples in whatever boxes we could find, and the quality control team.

We hauled apples in tomato boxes, tote bins, whatever was around the house. If you have never seen a truck loaded to the springs with West Virginia apples, it is a good sight, and it smells even better.

The kids helped. The kids also ate a meaningful percentage of the inventory, which we have chosen to write off as quality control.

One bottle at a time

The first bottles were filled and capped by the whole family, one at a time, standing around a bench capper until somebody's arms gave out and the next person stepped in.

All hands on the line, and the homemade keg washer.

The keg washing setup was PVC pipe and hose clamps that our resident engineer built himself, because the real equipment cost more than we had. It worked. It also leaked, but it worked.

The first time we set up a table

The first folding table, and the first people who showed up for us.

There is a specific kind of nervous that comes with putting your product on a folding table in front of strangers for the first time. What if nobody stops. Worse, what if they stop and they do not like it.

People stopped. People liked it. Some of them are still on this list ten years later, which is not a small thing and something we are extremely grateful for.

Then it started going out the door

Kegs stacked two high on a pallet with our name on the side.

And then the medals showed up

Our first batches won Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition medals, and that was about the point it stopped feeling like a very ambitious hobby.  We then went store to store and bar to bar all across the state of West Virginia and so many people gave us a chance.  This then lead to state wide distribution and beyond.  We are so grateful to everyone who believed in our mission to make great beverages and give back.  

We planted our own orchard

Every tree went in by hand, one shovel at a time.

Lucy supervised our orchard planting too, though her contribution was mostly moral support and occasional digging in the wrong spot.

Ten years later

Cider became bourbon. Bourbon became the Official Bourbon of WVU Athletics, which is not a sentence anyone in that basement would have believed.

We eventually moved out to a 20,000 square foot production facility in Upper Tract. Still family owned. Still the same dog on the bottle. We may have grown, but we do not forget the hard work that got us here and all of the amazing support from you, our Swilled Fans.

None of this happens without the people who took a chance on a cider from a county most folks cannot find on a map. Every bottle we have made, somebody chose. Most of the time, that somebody was one of you.

Thank you for ten years.