Noble Cider founder shares what's next after downtown taproom closure

ASHEVILLE - The search is on for a new home for Noble Cider’s second taproom.

On Jan. 9, the Asheville-based hard cider company announced its downtown location at 49 Rankin Ave. would close on Jan. 14 ahead of the lease ending on the building.

People searching for Noble’s collection of flagship and seasonal hard cider, spritzers and mead on draft may visit its West Asheville cidery and taproom at 356 New Leicester Highway.

“The company’s doing great. This taproom is staying open. Production is continuing. We’re just looking for a space that fits us better,” said Lief Stevens, owner and cidermaker who founded the company in 2012.

Stevens plans to open a new second location that best suits the cidery’s needs.

Noble’s downtown presence

In 2019, Noble Cider opened on Rankin Avenue as a high-end restaurant-taproom concept called Greenhouse. After the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, the business reopened as solely a taproom.

“It didn’t make sense to restart that after COVID, so we’ve been operating it as basically just a taproom since then but paying for a space that has a big commercial kitchen in it,” Stevens said. “It just makes sense for us to look for a smaller space that’s better set up to be just a taproom that’s a better fit for us.”

The Noble team intended to find a new location before the lease ended so there would be a smooth relocation transition, but a new venue wasn’t secured in time.

“We definitely want to open additional taprooms. It may be downtown or it might be in a different area of Asheville,” Stevens said. “We like our main taproom, which is kind of far out but it’s in an area that doesn’t have a whole lot, so we get a lot of neighborhood people who are regulars. We kind of like that atmosphere.”

Noble’s new taproom wish list

There are several aspects that the new taproom is envisioned to have, beginning with visibility. The downtown location lacked foot traffic, Stevens said.

“That location, it’s not really on the beaten path. It’s not far from it but it’s not on one of the central streets, so that was a little bit of a challenge,” he said. “We had a fair amount of people, but they kind of have to find you; they’re not people who just happen to walk by.”

Stevens envisions the new venue to be more intimate ― perhaps about 2,000 square feet. The Rankin Avenue space was too large after the restaurant closed and it became a dedicated taproom.

Stevens said he would like a building that’s already at least partially set up for a restaurant or taproom, which will make it easier and more affordable for permit approval and to convert the space for the cidery.

“We want to find a space that’s enjoyable for people to come to, convenient for people to come to,” he said. “We like to have spaces that have a nice atmosphere; so just finding a space that’s nice for us.”

Evolution and future cider and of Noble Cider

Stevens said he continues to see growth in Noble’s retail presence across its distribution market, which includes grocery stores in North Carolina and the Southeast and now Japan.

Stevens said the company’s focus is on production and “putting out great ciders.”

Noble co-owns the juicing company, Blue Ridge Pure, in partnership with Lewis Creek Farm, an orchard in Hendersonville.

“That’s one of the more exciting things for us,” Stevens said. “As part of that company, we were able to plant a specialty orchard seven years ago of old American apples, English apples and French apples that are cider-specific.”

He said the apples are high in tannin and polyphenols that make good cider and differ from the dessert apples that are mostly grown in the United States.

“We’re getting some good yields now from that orchard, and that’s exciting as a cidermaker because we’re able to start making these specialized ciders that are quite different from a lot of other cider out there,” Stevens said. “They’re much like the ciders they produced in England and France.”

The Lewis Creek Orchard Reserve small-batch collection includes French, English and American heirloom ciders, as well as the Black and Gold, which is a cider made of Arkansas Black and Goldrush apples aged in brandy barrels.

Stevens said the demand for cider continues to rise for the company and beverage industry.

“When we started, we had to visit bars and restaurants trying to get them to take our cider and we had to explain what cider was to a lot of people, and that has completely changed,” Stevens said. “Everyone knows what cider is now, and it’s much more accepted.”

Customers’ tastes have changed as they discover variations of cider beyond the “sweet and soda-like” kind, he said.

“People are not starting to explore very dry cider and ciders made of specialty fruit,” Stevens said. “It’s exciting to see that evolution, similar to what happened in craft beer where people discovered beer could be something different than the mass-produced beer out there. There’s a whole world of cider that people are starting to learn about and explore.”

Noble Cider

Where: 356 New Leicester Highway, Asheville.

Hours: 3-9 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 2-9 p.m. Saturday; 2-8 p.m. Sunday.

Info: For more, visit NobleCider.com and follow on Instagram @noble_cider.

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Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at tkennell@citizentimes.com or follow her on Instagram @PrincessOfPage. Please support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Noble Cider seeks new taproom location in Asheville, sees more demand