Imbibe 75 Person to Watch: Christine Walter

Christine Walter is a fifth-generation farmer at Bauman’s Farm & Garden, which her family homesteaded in Gervais, Oregon, in 1895. Over the decades, Bauman’s expanded to include baked goods, a garden center, and canned goods. “We’re always looking for ways to make the family farm sustainable,” says Walter, who grew up pressing apple juice. Turning farmstead apples into cider seemed like another value add. “They were like, ‘That will never work. It’s just a fad,’” Walter says. She disagreed.

Nine years ago, Walter began making cider in a family barn, finding a calling in co-fermenting apples with fruits she grew up eating, such as peaches, pears, and loganberries. “I was making really approachable, farm-fresh flavors,” Walter says. Her tenacious hobby became Bauman’s Cider, one of the Pacific Northwest’s ascendant cideries. At last year’s Northwest Cider Cup, Walter’s ciders won seven medals, including best of show for its rosé-like Mountain Rose that’s made with red-fleshed Oregon apples. “It’s expressive and wonderful, and we just love it,” Walter says.

Cider making brought Walter back into the family business. She left the farm for college and then Texas, where she married and had two daughters, before moving to Portland, Oregon, and becoming a massage therapist, later earning a college degree in biochemistry. The skillset helps her fine-tune blends and approaches, be it the company’s best-selling Loganberry Cider that tastes like “a berry Jolly Rancher,” Walter says, or the sparkling Pét Mac, a single-varietal McIntosh apple cider inspired by natural wine.

Last year, the cidery took over a former location of Portland’s Ecliptic Brewing and converted it into Bauman’s on Oak. The production facility and restaurant serves as a showcase for cider’s food-pairing potential, featuring the likes of crab rolls with miso mayonnaise, roasted beets, and nettle salsa, and house-baked sourdough bread with caramelized onion butter. “We’re trying to shift the perception of cider in such a beautiful way,” Walter says.