Name it First, Of Course
Cider and cheese is truly a match made in heaven. I could make cider and serve great cheese made by other, braver souls (those who are willing to have the FDA practically move in with them). Cider is a fermentation, a process I’d become fascinated with in cheese making. Never mind that I had never made one drop of cider in my life.
It was enough for me that initial research yielded this one quote from Claude Jolicoeur: “Could such a small orchard permit a successful commercial cider-making venture? Personally, I think the answer to this is yes…” (from The New Cider Maker’s Handbook, Chelsea Green Publishing, Vermont).
And hey, we already had an orchard!
Permission to self: time to start a business. I'm a busy person (some would say wiggly) and there was no way I could sit with a beautiful view and just, well, sit. Kids had flown, and it was time for Act III.
So we started with a name.
The name was an easy pick…to us anyway. Around the time we got married we had become obsessed with Edward Lear's 19th century poem, “The Owl and the Pussycat,” a short, inspiring tale of an unlikely pair determined to look for adventure
and mystery who eventually “dance by the light of the moon” (that line is engraved in our wedding rings). They eat quince with a runcible spoon* – runcible was a favorite nonsense word which for Lear meant something useful, tinged with whimsy, adaptable, and perhaps describes something your grandmother had in her drawer that you’ve now discovered and is completely wonderful even though you’ve no idea what it is. The word just sounds good.
Thus the orchard now had a future (ailing cherries to be replaced by cider apple trees), a name (Runcible), so we launched into what has now been almost three year’s worth of cider making, learning, tasting, appreciating, falling in love, and building a business.
*Not a spork, by the way!
