Aaron Brown and Colin Blackshear are from Sonoma, and while Aaron’s early years of adulthood had him traveling to England and learning about their cider making traditions, Colin has been in the area for the majority of his life. The two combine to make the core of Bardos, a cider project that seeks to represent and protect the history of the apple trees in California. While some of the apples Bardos uses are sourced from commercial farms, the majority is gleaned from orchards that have been abandoned for decades, left to their own devices and thriving without human involvement. Bardos, as a concept, derives from the Tibetan word for an intermediary/transitional being between living and dead–most labels depict a California Bardo, someone who played an important role in the history of what we now call California but may have been left out of predominant retellings of the history. All of the apple trees that Aaron, Colin, and their friends work with are dry farmed and require very little in the way of “farming” outside of routine pruning and tidying (the roots are extremely deep and can find water regardless of the above-ground conditions at this point). However, due to the lack of popularity of heirloom apple varieties and the cider these apples make, many orchards have been ripped up to plant wine grapes and other crops that require significantly more resources to thrive.

Links to more info about Bardos: