Carriage House is a love story

A love of traditional cider made with natural ingredients from mother nature. A love of Michigan and every one of its apple orchards and everyone in its community. A love of the flavor our cider brings out of good food.

We celebrate each apple’s uniqueness, whether it’s a Hoople’s Antique Gold, Grime’s Golden, Dabinett, Foxwhelp—or any of the abundance of varieties we use to create a different, fuller flavor cider each with an expression all its own.

Falling in love usually involves a leap of faith, a heap of daring, and a dash of crazy.

We’re crazy enough to select and prepare every apple of the thousands that go into our ciders. To use wild yeast that's found on the skins of the apples, leaving nature in control. To use oak barrels for fermenting and aging to lend flavor and tannins to our cider. And crazy enough to restore and remake a 137-year-old carriage house into a cidery.

We’re daring enough to bring European-style cider to American tables because we believe our customers are daring enough to try and embrace something unique.

We take a leap of faith with every batch and bring only the most delightful, interesting ciders to our market.

How about them apples?

Our Process

At Carriage House, we select every Michigan apple that goes into our cider by hand.

Our Process

we use only 3 ingredients

• Apple juice crushed fresh here at the cidery for each batch

• Wild yeast found on the apple skins

• Some sugar to help with the fermenting process.

Our Process

We source our apples from local Southwest Michigan orchards

We use more varieties than any cidery in our area. Last year we used 50 different varieties.

Our Process

The naturally gluten-free cider is aged and fermented in oak barrels to lend flavor and tannins for a fuller, more interesting taste that pairs well with rich food.

Our Process

Sustainability is important to us

So we invite local farmers to pick up our pomace—the pulp remaining after apples have been crushed—to feed to their livestock, and we accept our bottles back from customers to recycle.

OUR STORY

Paula Camp’s love of cider began when she interviewed the famed French chef, Jacques Pépin, and tried his homemade cider. From there, the former Chicago Tribune restaurant critic experimented with a cider recipe from Pépin. In 2016, Paula and her wife, Mary Connors, a former journalist and editor, together with family and friends, transformed their 137-year-old carriage house in Benton Harbor, Michigan into a modern-day craft cidery. In 2020, the Carriage House brand was born.

While the cidery is relatively new, the Carriage House cider-making process dates back centuries—used by Europeans and early American settlers.