On Sunday, October 25, 2026, Etta Place Cidery (Torrey, UT) will release a new hard cider made entirely from apples harvested from Capitol Reef National Park’s historic Fruita orchards, in conjunction with the first all-Utah cider event at Scion Cider Bar in Salt Lake City.
In a growing year declared a disaster by UT Governor Spencer Cox after a devastating late spring freeze, like nearly every other grower in the state, Etta Place Cidery lost its entire crop of cidermaking apples.
Just a few miles away, but 1500’ lower in altitude, the Fruita U-pick orchards were spared, and actually produced a bumper crop. For the first time ever, Etta Place Cidery applied for a special use permit to pick fruit for a commercial product. Park personnel granted the permit with provisos that protected the general public visitor experience and the health of the trees.
Apples for the CARE cider (a word play on the National Park Service’s internal shorthand for the park) were harvested from four separate Fruita orchards. Varieties include the endemic Capitol Reef Red apple. Over 5,000 lbs of fruit were removed, specifically lightening the load on branches that were breaking from the excess weight of the crop.
“We were grateful for the opportunity to harvest this fruit in a year where we actually had the capacity, since we weren’t picking our own orchards,” said Ann Torrence, co-owner of Etta Place Cidery.
“As the gateway town to the park, Torrey and Etta Place have a special attachment to these historic orchards. The care and stewardship demonstrated by the park personnel to keep those trees in good condition with so few resources is something we wanted to honor with this bottling,” she added.
Etta Place Cidery is donating $1 per bottle of the CARE cider to the Capitol Reef Natural History Association for use in scientific research in the Fruita orchards, such as additional DNA sampling to identify unknown cultivars.
“We were actually inspired in 2010 to plant our own apples after visiting the Jackson Orchard in the park and experiencing the U-pick. We may never have this opportunity again so it was especially nice to bring it full circle in what has otherwise been a terrible agricultural year for us as growers.”
CARE cider will debut at Scion Cider Bar (916 S Jefferson St, Salt Lake City) on Sunday at the first ever Utah Cider Showcase. For the first time, all eight cider producers in the state will come together to pour for the public from 1-5 pm. It will also be available by the bottle or glass on Sunday in Etta Place Cidery’s Torrey taproom. The Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services will distribute the product by special order.
