Ellison Bay cidery Island Orchard will open Pomona Cider Co. in Milwaukee by summer, according to a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Pomona – run by Island Orchard founder Bob Purman – will occupy a single-story building at 2163 N. Farwell Ave. with beautiful Northwestern Terra Cotta Co. details on the front.
The company plans to renovate the 2,100-square-foot building – erected at the O.H. Adams Building Co. at a cost of $20,000 in 1927 – into a tasting room that will also serve a limited array of craft beer and wine and will use a wood-fired oven to make appetizers, including flatbreads.
All of the cider on draft in the tasting room will be made on-site. Bottles of Island Orchard Cider will also be for sale at the Milwaukee location.
The cidery will also have a deck that will overlook the Oak Leaf Trail, a former railroad right of way, below, according to the report.
Island Orchard’s Door County cider house (pictured below) is located in a renovated 1930s storehouse and sells ciders – including specialty quaffs – by the glass or by the flight, as well as a range of snacks.
(PHOTO: Island Orchard Cider)
Island Orchard makes a wide variety of ciders and lists 17 varieties on its web site.
Milwaukee’s Tom Gabert, who has served as an Island Orchard sales rep and owns Pour Inc. professional bartending service, will be the general manager of the new location, which will make its own cider on-site.
Pomona – named for a barrel-aged Brut cider made by Island Orchard – will be the city’s first small-scale cidery. All of the MolsonCoors ciders are produced in Milwaukee at the company’s Tenth Street Brewery.
It will be the city's second cider-focused bar, after Lost Valley Cider, which opened four years ago in Walker's Point.
Island Orchard was named in honor of Bob and Yannique Purman’s Washington Island apple orchard, planted in 2005.
Last year, Door County Brewing Company opened Hacienda Beer Company, just two blocks north, on the corner of Farwell and North.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
