The drive through Madison County’s winding roads, rolling hills and fall foliage sets an enchanting mood for visitors en route to Winterset Cidery, an apple orchard and mill located 30 minutes southwest of Des Moines.

The cidery’s owner, Nick Williams, said he and his wife, Niña, stumbled upon the place in 2019. They knew nothing about owning an orchard or making cider as they took a leap of faith and purchased the orchard in August.

They had heard from a friend that the previous owners, who had begun the orchard as a hobby in their retirement years, were looking to sell it along with their hard cider brand. The previous owners had so much success that their hobby had become more of a job and required more work than they were interested in keeping up with. The opportunity prompted the Williamses to visit the orchard. What they experienced there made them fall in love with everything about it.

“As we were walking through the orchard and (the) sun was setting … over those hills … there was something more there that we couldn’t quite put our finger on. It felt right,” Nick Williams said.

They saw the need for more to be done, and they were willing to put in the time do the work and say yes to more opportunities for the cidery. Williams and his wife believe God brought the orchard to them so they could fill its growing needs.

He said they knew they were taking a risk, but they prayed and decided they were going to let go and let God lead them.

So, they got to work and picked up where the previous owners had left off in the middle of the 2019 season. They finished the original owners’ plans for the year, closed their doors for the season in October and for the next six months, spent their time rebranding, reconstructing and adding some personal touches to the venue.

The hard work has paid off. The Winterset Cidery produced more than double the amount of cider for the 2020 season than was produced in 2019, and in April the Williamses were ready to open their doors for their first full year as the cidery’s new owners. However, COVID-19 halted their plans.

“We (had) all this cider and (couldn’t) even open,” Williams said. “It was certainly scary.”

Fortunately, about 50 days later, the Williamses were able to open for business, and when they did, Williams said, “people showed up.”

The late opening and the new ownership were not the only changes for Winterset Cidery in 2020. This year, the Williamses decided to open the venue up to people of all ages. Having four children of their own helped them understand that people could not have a babysitter due to the nature of the pandemic.

“We would rather people bring that money they would have spent on a babysitter and bring the kids instead,” Williams said.

The venue has indoor seating and a spacious deck with a scenic view, but visitors are encouraged to bring lawn chairs or blankets and make themselves at home on the lawn where children are free to roam. Visitors are welcome to bring their four-legged friends along, too. On the weekends, they host live music and food trucks. They do not serve food at the cidery, but they supply free popcorn.

Besides making the venue family-friendly, the Williamses also decided to leave the gates to the apple orchard open so visitors can walk through and experience the same magic they did on their first visit.

“We tell people this is the magic,” Williams said. “There’s something special that happens in there when the wind whips through those leaves. Go out there … you feel it in your veins.”

Williams said the best thing about being at the cidery is being away from the pollution of city lights and the experience of the sunset from the hillside.

“To me, that is what it is all about,” Willams said. “And that comes before the cider.”

Unlike hard ciders that are mass produced, the ciders at Winterset Cidery do not contain any added water or sugar, and the flavors added are all natural.

Their flavors include cherry-vanilla, aronia berry, lime-habanero, apple pie, rye whiskey, raspberry, a pear flavored cider they call perry, a Winterset blend made from apples that come from different orchards in Winterset and their estate blend, which consists only of apples from their orchard. They also sell other small-batch flavors from time to time. For $10, visitors can get a flight that allows them to sample four flavors at once, and all of their ciders are gluten-free.

The cider-making process begins in the Williamses’ orchard with anywhere between 650 and 700 dwarf trees – a special breed of tree grown for handpicking. Handpicking means the apples do not have to be shaken out; therefore, they never touch the ground. This method provides guests with premium-quality hard cider.

In total, the apples grown at Winterset Cidery produce about 500 gallons of juice and account for about 25% of the cider produced there. The other 75% comes from apples grown at Iowa orchards that press their apples and then bring the juice to Winterset so the Williamses and their staff can do the rest.

The Williamses feel blessed. Recently, they announced that they were opening their doors to the Lutheran Church of Hope for worship on Sunday mornings when the cidery is closed for business. It is unusual to think of a cidery hosting worship on Sunday mornings, but being able to provide a space for folks to “come with the dirt on their boots … and have life breathed into them … that’s when we knew why we had fell into this place and this is why we’re here,” Williams said.

They are already planning for next year.

So far, they have plans for a “community press day,” where people from the community can bring apples from their own trees to make a community batch.

“What is cool about that,” Williams said, “is you don’t know (what) it’s going to taste like because you don’t know what apples you’re getting.”

Part of the proceeds from the sales of the community batch will be donated to local nonprofits.

“We take a lot of pride in our cider,” Williams said. “People tell me all the time, ‘I’m not a cider person’ but once they try our cider, they tell me, ‘I am a cider person now, and this is my spot.’”

A lot of variables play into the amount of cider the Williamses are able to produce and how long they are able to stay open during any given season. This year, they had twice as much cider, were open for business 50 fewer days and still sold all of their cider by the same time as they did the year before. Due to the growing demand for their cider, they ran out a day earlier than they had planned for this year. Therefore, they had to announce on Facebook that they would be closed for their last official day of the season.

If anyone missed visiting the orchard this season, they will have to wait until May of 2021 to experience the magic for themselves. More information about Winterset Cidery, including which bands and food trucks they will be hosting on any given weekend, can be found on their Facebook page.