In May 2024, Mathias Kamin and Anne Bryant opened the doors of Bon Vent Cider in Hancock, ME. Their cozy, inviting tasting room is located in a former antique shop on Route 1, where guests are warmly welcomed to listen or play along with old-time weekly music jams and other community events.
Mathias Kamin, a musician, carpenter, and experienced cider maker from upstate New York, moved to Maine in 2018, and was surprised by the lack of cider makers in the area. He got a job at Fogtown Brewery in Ellsworth and worked there for two years, helping them to develop cider and fruit lines before continuing on to work at Shalom Orchards in Franklin for another two years— all the while exploring Downeast Maine and scouting hundreds of apple and pear trees. He’s introduced himself to countless landowners and developed relationships with many (and has also been permitted to harvest fruit from many of these trees free of charge). When Kamin started to consider taking a break from the beverage business, his friend, Ann Bryant, helped convince him not to. Instead, they decided to partner in their own cider venture.
Bryant, a wooden boat enthusiast and videographer by trade, came up with their name. Bon vent is a French word meaning fair winds (although it also means good riddance, congratulations, good luck, goodbye, and, most importantly, CHEERS). The name is a nod to her love of sailing and Kamin’s high school experience in France, which is where he first learned about cider making. Although they both have backgrounds in the food and beverage industry, Kamin focuses mostly on cider making and Bryant is the director of operations.
In 2023, The Portland Press Herald reported that Maine had twice as many cider producers as it did in 2019, and cider sales have increased 10% in the state from 2022 to 2023. Cider, it would seem, is the up-and-coming alcohol. Although it is only now regaining popularity, hard cider is not new in Maine’s history. In fact, it was the original drink of choice of early colonists in America and Mainers would use local apples to make their own regionally unique batches of cider to share with neighbors—which is exactly what Bon Vent wants to bring back into fashion.
All of the fruit used in their ciders is sourced from the Downeast region and Bryant and Kamin harvest it themselves. With permission, they often gather apples and pears on private properties, where landowners have little use for the fruit. Many of their source trees are vestiges of bygone orchards—uncultivated and abandoned—and a number are located in difficult to access places along the rugged coastline, occasionally even rooted in the intertidal zone, gnarled and pruned by the ocean itself. The fruit is made into cider in much the same way as it would have been in the early 1800s, when some of these trees were first bearing (with the addition of steel, plastic hosing and eclectic pumps, of course). Bon Vent cider is aged in old French oak barrels stored in a cellar at cold temperatures for anywhere from 6-months to 1-2 years, in almost exactly the same way that it would have been made two hundred years ago. In keeping with these traditional methods of fermentation, wild yeast is used to inoculate the batches as opposed to industrial yeast, as well.
One of their most popular ciders was made with apples from Lamoine, and another was made with apples from the west side, or “quiet side,” of Mount Desert Island. The French term terroir refers to all the environmental factors that influence the character and taste of a wine in a specific region (factors such as climate, soil, topography/aspect, and local traditions or viticulture techniques). This concept explains why a Cabernet Sauvignon grown in Bordeaux tastes different from the same grape variety grown in Napa Valley, and why Bon Vent’s unique ciders impart such an extraordinary “sense of place,” each reflecting their own wild, coastal origins. Bryant and Kamin both have a strong sense of connection to coastal Hancock County and aim to strengthen that bond with locally produced beverages and a place where people can gather to enjoy them. “We’re trying to show place and time with our ciders,” Bryant said. “Everything is truly of this place.”
Kamin and Bryant want to keep their operation small on purpose in order to focus on making good, locally produced cider, rather than growing their brand. Bon Vent produces less than 2,000 gallons of cider annually, so it is considered a micro-cidery. The two business owners believe that making and selling this cider is not only an ethical way to make a living for themselves, but is also a tangible way that they can honor forgotten orchards and roadside trees— they work with land owners to prune trees to improve their productivity, and also to make them hardy in the face of a changing climate which threatens with stronger storms and strange seasons.
The tasting room is a space for friends and neighbors to enjoy old-time music and lesser-known bands, to host seed swaps and craft fairs, and to host dinners with partnering farms. It is a place where visitors should never feel like they have to drink alcohol to be a part of the crowd, because all are welcome and connected by community and events. Along with cider, live music is served up throughout the week at Bon Vent. The Jazz & Blues Jam will be restarting in January on Wednesdays from 6-8pm, an Old-Time Southern Appalachian music session is held every Thursday from 6-8pm (Kamin is often one of the featured acts, as he is just as good with a banjo as he is with fermenting fruits!), and the Sip N’ Stitch mending circle meets on Fridays from 6-8pm. Additionally, Irish Sessions are held on the first and third Sundays of the month, from 5-7pm. There will be a special New Orleans style New Year Celebration at Bon Vent from 7-10pm on 12/31, featuring live music performed by the Downeast Revelers ($20 cover). Keep an eye on their Events page for music and other happenings.
Food isn’t served at Bon Vent (although small, $2 snacks are offered), but guests are encouraged to bring a picnic to enjoy while they sample the cider. There are typically 5-6 cider blends available in bottles and on draft and they offer a $7 tasting with 2-oz pours of each cider, during which you can hear the story of how each blend came to be. Their drafts can be purchased as howlers (half-growlers/32 oz) and Bon Vent can also cater kegs of cider for events (although they require 5 days’ notice if you’d like a keg) and cases for 10% off the bottle price. They offer Spindrift seltzers as a non-alcoholic option and if you sign up for their newsletter, you will be privy to the news of when they have fresh blueberry juice and sweet cider in late summer and fall. The tasting room is located at 684 U.S. Hwy 1, Suite 1 in Hancock, ME 04640.
Currently, you can find Sal’s Dream (a refreshing blueberry wine blended with hard cider) in 750ml bottles and Naskeag Point (a clean, dry cider fermented with wild yeast and apples foraged from the WoodenBoat School and Brooklin Town Landing) in 375ml bottles at the Blue Hill Co-op.
