Elizabeth Ryan
Producer of Hudson Valley Farmhouse Cider
Elizabeth Ryan is the producer of Hudson Valley Farmhouse Cider. She is a renowned fruit grower and cider maker who studied cider making in Somerset and Hereford in England. Ryan made her first barrel of cider in 1980, while obtaining her Pomology degree at Cornell University. In 1984, she bought Breezy Hill Orchard in Dutchess County and her operation has been ever-expanding leading up to the launch of Hudson Valley Farmhouse Cider in 1996, and the addition of several farms and orchards including Stone Ridge Orchard near New Paltz.
As one of the founding GrowNYC Greenmarket farmers, bringing fantastic farm-based products to the greater public has always been her mission. She also opened a café in Harlem in order to bring fresh, healthy food to a neighborhood that was known, at the time, as a food desert. For these efforts, she received the Cornucopia award from Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, was inducted into Cornell's Hall of Fame for alumna, and was a Smithsonian Fellow. She was a keynote speaker at the New York State Governor's Alcohol Summit where she advocated for policy to support small-scale hard cider production. She also helped to create a line of home brewing kits for the Williams-Sonoma Agrarian collection, including hard cider, mead, wine and sparkling wine. And was most recently awarded a lifetime achievement award from the American Cider Association in recognition of her decades-long work with apples and in sustainable agriculture.
