Our Story
Just 20km from Adelaide, the Adelaide Hills has been the main apple growing region of South Australia since the 1800's.
Cidermaking began back then as well, and various cider companies have come and gone over time.
LOBO began back in 2007, we started with a few experiments to try and make some cider out of leftover apples at Michael's orchard.
Encouraged by the results, the experiments became trials, trying out different apple varieties to see which would make the best cider. Granny Smith were a bit tart, Fuji tended to be sweet and bland, Red Delicious was pretty good, but it turned out that a blend of mostly Pink Lady apples has a good flavour and natural balance.
Settling on a blend of mostly Pink Lady apples, we also decided that cloudy cider tasted better than filtered. South Australia has a long tradition of bottle fermented beer, made by our friends at Coopers Brewery, so we thought why not introduce people to cloudy cider, and LOBO was born.
IT WAS ENTHUSIASTICALLY ENJOYED AND HAS GROWN FROM THERE.
As sales expanded Michael grafted a portion of the orchard to change some old Sundowners over to cider apple varieties. Cider apples with unaccustomed names such as Yarlington Mill, Kingston Black, Dabinett and Somerset Redstreak. These are English varieties grown in Europe specifically for making cider, they tend to have more tannin than eating apples and make a more traditional style of cider, darker in colour with more structure and complex flavour.
We use these sorts of apples in the Trad and the 750mL small batch ciders, with sometimes a sprinkling making it into the LOBO cloudy.
