ENTERTAINMENT

Wilson's Orchard adds restaurant with Rapid Creek Cidery

Zach Berg
zberg@press-citizen.com

With wood from two 100-year-old barns, Wilson's Orchard has added something new to the hilly terrain of the family-owned Iowa City apple orchard: Rapid Creek Cidery.

Inside the 10,000-square-foot barn-like structure, the cidery will boast a full-service restaurant with a bar that features Wilson's Orchard hard cider and a special events space for wedding receptions, business events and more.

Rapid Creek Cidery at Wilson's Orchard is pictured on Wednesday, March 15, 2017.

Set to open once the snow melts from the hills and apple trees, or sometime around mid-April, Rapid Creek Cidery is the newest addition to the orchard that has been selling apples since 1980.

Owned and operated by Katie Goering, the daughter of Wilson's Orchard owner Paul Rasch, Rapid Creek will not only act as a new destination venue tucked into the serene countryside of the rural orchard, but also as an expansion of a beloved local family business.

Paul Rasch and his daughter, Katie Goering, discuss plans for Rapid Creek Cidery at Wilson's Orchard on Wednesday, March 15, 2017.

“The whole idea of family is critical, I think, to what we do at Wilson’s," Rasch said while sitting next to his daughter Wednesday morning inside Rapid Creek. "We’re very family oriented. It’s a natural extension for a family farm to operate as a business, as a cohesive unit, not only on a personal level but a business level."

Since opening in 1980, Wilson's Orchard has become a destination for fall fun in Johnson County. At its peak during the fall, the orchard draws thousands of visitors each week. During the winter, when the apple trees are bare and snow covers the hillsides, the orchard is closed to visitors. With Rapid Creek, Rasch sees the orchard becoming a destination year-round.

The first floor of Rapid Creek Cidery — named after the creek that runs through the orchard — will feature a restaurant with room for about 120 diners, and a downstairs event space that can host groups of up to 250 people.

With dressing rooms, bathrooms, views of the orchard through large windows and a brick path that leads to a wedding ceremony area in the middle of an oak grove, the event space adds another wedding destination for soon-to-be married couple.

Rapid Creek Cidery's lower level, which will be used as a venue for weddings and private events, is pictured on Wednesday, March 15, 2017.

Though Goering will be watching over both the restaurant and event space, one thing that will inexorably tie the two will be the food designed and cooked by chef Matt Steigerwald, a name familiar to foodies, especially those north of Iowa City. Steigerwald — a semifinalist for the James Beard award, the highest honor for chefs in America — owned and operated Mount Vernon's Lincoln Cafe for 13 years, then bought the neighboring Lincoln Wine Bar in 2006.

Though Steigerwald brings with him some serious culinary chops, he said he wants the food to reflect Wilson's long history of creating and using local goods like the orchard's apples, and will feature classic desserts like apple turnovers and cherry pies.

That includes Wilson's Orchard Hard Cider, the line of hard ciders that have been popping up in Hy-Vee stores, New Pioneer Co-op stores and on tap at many bars and restaurants across the area since Wilson's started brewing the drinks about two years ago.

A bushel of Zestar apples awaits departure at Wilson's Orchard south of Solon on Monday, August 15, 2011.

“Their cider is a craft product," Steigerwald said. "There’s a core group of people that work to make the best, locally produced product possible. I’m trying to build a kitchen staff with the same focus on the food, making sure every ingredient used is properly sourced. There’s a lot of hard work behind the scenes to do that, but Wilson's has proven that it's worth the hard work for decades."

The makings of a cidery

Discussions about opening an indoor facility at the orchard have been brewing for years, Goering said. Weddings had been held at the orchard in years past, but without a proper indoor venue, weather was often a concern.

Rasch said since he became owner of the orchard in 2009, he has been looking for ways to leverage the land and products grown while also looking to diversify the business.

That was one of the major reasons Wilson's in 2015 began brewing and selling hard cider made with apples and cherries from the orchard, Rasch said.

Once the hard cider was flowing, Goering said the family began envisioning a venue that would serve and sell hard cider separate from the orchard where many parents bring their kids to pick apples and eat treats.

“It all just started to become clear to us. To host weddings and events, you need food. To serve hard cider, you need food," Goering said.

Rapid Creek Cidery at Wilson's Orchard is pictured on Wednesday, March 15, 2017.

With a new restaurant and events space in mind, Rasch and his team began deconstructing two old barns donated to the orchard in 2015. By summer 2016, all of the wood from the barns was pieced together to become Rapid Creek Cidery, and the family turned to finding the person who would shape Rapid Creek's menu.

Steigerwald had just sold both the Lincoln Wine Bar and the Lincoln Cafe, and Rasch said his family had been big fans of his food at the Mount Vernon establishments, so they met to discuss the possibilities of the food at Rapid Creek.

"I think Matt was an early pioneer of using really fresh, really local ingredients and adding his creativity to that," Rasch said. “We focus on that at the orchard, so we wanted to focus on that, too, at the restaurant. He really had developed a template of a lot of what he wanted to do, so we asked him to join."

Some menu items at Rapid Creek are set in stone, like the fried oyster sandwich that was popular at Steigerwald's previous restaurants. That's true of ingredients, too. Steigerwald promised to "focus on finding the best products in season."

Rapid Creek Cidery's lower level, which will be used as a venue for weddings and private events, is pictured on Wednesday, March 15, 2017.

Pork and lamb won't be too hard to find since Rasch said the family raises hogs and lamb that are fed pomace, the solid remains of apples left after they are pressed to make hard cider. Meat from those animals will be prepared and served at Rapid Creek along with other dishes dreamed up by Steigerwald and his kitchen staff.

"I see strong flavor profiles, ingredients working very well together, but pared back in its complication. Not as garnished, not as fussy as what I use to do at the cafe," Steigerwald said. "We're looking at those flavors through the lens of a dinner-party feel as well. A bit more casual, a little more personal."

Katie Goering and her father, Paul Rasch, discuss plans for Rapid Creek Cidery at Wilson's Orchard on Wednesday, March 15, 2017.

For the restaurant, Goering hopes it becomes "a place where people can learn about cider," noting that many people may be familiar with the national brands of hard ciders but are missing "the creativity smaller brands like Wilson’s have when it comes to making cider.”

“I also hope it becomes a community gathering place where people can get good food, good drinks, talk and have a good time,” Goering said.

Stabilizing the family farm

Rasch sees Rapid Creek Cidery as more than just a restaurant and events venue, but as a way to bring more stability to the often unpredictable world of family farms.

"Besides the fact that I’m going to have a permanent bar stool right there at bar, I look at Rapid Creek Cidery as our best customer," Rasch said. "We’re not only going to be selling Rapid Creek Cidery our hard cider, we’ll sell it apples and meat."

Since Rapid Creek is owned by Goering and on the Wilson's Orchard property, the cidery will pay regular rent.

"That will be regular source of income, instead of all of our income coming in an eight-week period of time," Rasch said, referring to the orchard's busy fall months.

Lights hang down inside Rapid Creek Cidery at Wilson's Orchard on Wednesday, March 15, 2017.

Wilson's Orchard gets most of its profits during the fall when apples are ready to harvest and thousands of visitors stream into the orchard. Rent from Rapid Creek adds some fiscal stability even during years when harvests are smaller or completely destroyed at the orchard.

"As we see increasingly with the change of climate, weather patterns changing, we see a lot uncertainty in the crop,” Rasch said.

In 2012, the entire crop was lost. In 2005, the Wilson family, which started and previously owned the orchard, also lost the crop completely. The orchard has also seen more seasons where the orchard loses 30 to 40 percent of its crops, Rasch said.

“One important aspect of this is to diversify and allow us to have another source of revenue even if the crop isn’t as big as we want it to be. Even if the crop is weak, we can still sell food, we can still sell cider and host events,” Rasch said.

Thousands of people came out to Wilson's Orchard in rural Iowa City on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2015.

If all goes to plan, Rasch wants Wilson's Orchard and Rapid Creek Cidery to be an example of what farmers in Johnson County can do in the face of an uncertain future.

"We also want to be an example in this county of what farming can be. Farming in Johnson County in 20 years is not going to look like it does now." Rasch said. "Land prices keep coming up and value-added processing, value-added crops and value-added operations like this are key to the future to maintaining agricultural land in this county.”

Reach Zach Berg at 319-887-5412, zberg@press-citizen.com, or follow him on Twitter at @ZacharyBerg. 

For more information on Rapid Creek Cidery, visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/rapidcreekcidery/.