The Beginning

Pictured: Trevor, Gary, Karen and Mary at Blacklock Point, near Bandon

Bandon Rain’s story began in 2014 when Bandon, Oregon third-generation cranberry farmer, Gary Gant, started tinkering with the idea of making hard cider. Gary knew that cranberries and cider didn’t just go together; they belonged together. Being new to cider making, Gary’s initial experiments were…. less than stellar. The story could easily have ended there. However, Gary was persistent and shared his early creations with family and friends.

Pictured: Gary and Karen Gant, both aficionados of craft beer and cider

These early experiments soon piqued the interest of his son, Trevor, and daughter-in-law, Mary. Some 800 miles south in sunny Los Angeles, Trevor and Mary picked up the project. Through many experiments, iterations, and collaborations with Gary, results were getting interesting…. interesting enough for both Trevor and Mary to consider drastic life and career change.

Trevor and Mary both worked irregular schedules, as the TV/film industries see-sawed between weeks on end of 10-hour workdays to sporadic weeks of unpaid downtime. Usually, they’d use this downtime to pick up smaller paid-projects like TV pilots, commercials as well as take vacations, and catch up on life in general.

After serious consideration, Trevor and Mary made plans for one of these breaks. Together and separately, Mary and Gary enrolled in mid-2015 cider-making workshops and classes, expanding their knowledge & skills. Soon, the entire family went to work. On a shoestring budget, they converted an old farm machine shop, located on Karen and Gary’s farm, into a proper workspace for a cidery.

Pictured: Trevor and Gary working the original cidery

Both the cidery and cider results were impressive enough that soon Mary and Trevor came to a crossroads: a choice to stay in LA or move to Trevor’s childhood home of Bandon on the Oregon coast. It wasn’t an easy decision as they’d accumulated a busy fulfilling life in Los Angeles, consisting of friendships, a condo, and their two cats.

Ultimately, they decided to take the road less traveled. They packed up what they could (cats being at the top of the list) and joined Gary and Karen in Bandon, Oregon, to open the first cidery on the Oregon Coast.

On September 9th of 2016, they unveiled Bandon Rain – Unique Craft Ciders to the world at the Bandon Cranberry Festival, with their signature Cranberry Squall Cider, which had taken more than two years and 21 iterations to perfect.

Pictured (left to right): Gary, Karen, Mary, Trevor at the Cranberry Festival in 2016

The Future

Building something organically, from the ground up is gratifying. A lot has happened in our first three years. Bandon Rain has gone from offering two year-round ciders to four (plus several seasonal ciders), from a pickup truck to a proper delivery van, & expanded production capability in order to expand from being available in a single town to statewide distribution.

Bandon Rain has major expansion plans on the horizon. In the summer of 2020, opened our own taproom in Bandon, where we serve our ciders, plus guest taps from our favorite Pacific Northwest cideries and breweries, along with Bandon Rain merchandise & growlers to go. We’ll be moving and expanding our production space in the connected warehouse. We also look forward to continuing to create new flavors & recipes.

We’re small but growing. Most of our cider is created from ingredients that can be sourced from the Pacific Northwest, and whenever possible, we support local businesses. If we aren’t already, we hope we’ll soon be available in your favorite restaurant, bar or taproom.

Pictured: Smog stands watch over Bandon Rain’s delivery van.