—story by Ross Courtney
—photos by TJ Mullinax
One California fruit farm is doing everything it can to keep it in the family.
To make room for all three siblings of the fourth generation, Chinchiolo Family Farms has diversified business outlets with a cidery, U-pick orchard and stalls at some of the state’s best-known farm markets to capitalize on the San Francisco Bay Area’s locally sourced ethos.
If everything works out, the next generation will have an opportunity, too.
“I want to see, and I think my kids do too, the farm progress to the fifth generation,” Steve Chinchiolo said, referring to his grandchildren.
His three children, Alex, Adam and Andrea, talk little of titles, but they all have assumed different, full-time, overlapping roles. “It changes every day, and I think we all joke about that,” Andrea said.
Steve and Alex live on and manage the farm in Ripon, just south of Stockton in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Adam lives in San Francisco, Andrea in San Rafael.
Adam makes the cider, while Andrea focuses on cider sales. The two of them manage the family’s presence at 10 or more farm markets. Andrea also leads the farm’s U-pick operations at two of their three orchards, which requires help from her dad and brother.
They manage the complex circle with humor, honest communication and weekly FaceTime meetings they dub “Chin Chats.”
“We’ve got a pretty good dynamic,” Adam said.
On the farm …
The farm is a mixture of nostalgia and innovation. Large trees stand next to high-density trellises.
“It’s a living thing,” Alex said of the farm, with its constant modernization and improvements.
They have productive, three-dimensional blocks of Fuji and Granny Smith that Steve calls “dinosaurs.” Meanwhile, on trellised rows, they deploy a tow-behind platform for pruning and thinning.
They use pheromone disruption for oriental fruit moth and codling moth control, and they release predators for rosy apple aphid. M3 Agriculture Technologies releases sterile codling moths by drone. For fire blight, they apply copper and Blossom Protect (Aureobasidium pullulans).
Weed control poses the toughest challenge at the 90-percent-organic farm. For most, they use an Italian Berti string weeder. The rest requires hand labor — or the weeds are just tolerated.
Pink Lady is their trickiest organic variety because it hangs so long on the tree, exposing it to more pest generations.
Two of their three orchard properties open for U-pick sales, including a cherry orchard that opens for roughly a month each year.
At the cidery …
They make the cider, branded Far West Cider Co., in a former U.S. Navy shipbuilding warehouse they share with a winery in Richmond, overlooking the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay and, on a clear day, a view of downtown skyscrapers to the west. Next door sits the historic Red Oak Victory ammunition ship turned museum.
Despite the attractive tasting room, the cidery has always been wholesale, focused on Bay Area restaurants and retail stores. A distributor helps them reach Los Angeles and San Diego markets.
They started in 2016 and have seen steady, year-over-year growth, outpacing their capacity. In 2022, they produced 35,000 gallons using only their farm’s fruit, but they outsourced some of the pressing and fermentation. They are expanding their tanks to bring production back under one roof.
Two acres of a dozen or so high-tannin apples, such as Nehou, Virginia Crab and Arkansas Black, help create their marketable flavors. They blend those with their dessert varieties and their cherries, as well as guava, strawberry and hot peppers.
Other blends include cultivars grafted from Curry Orchard, an apple block planted in the mid-1800s in what is now Yosemite National Park. Those could be eaten, but they work best for cider, cooking or their fresh juice line, they said.
California has many examples of apple families diversifying to survive and thrive, with cider in particular, said Todd Sanders, executive director of the California Apple Commission. Steve is a longtime board member for the commission.
California produces only 2 million boxes of apples per year but consumes 10 million. Still, the market demands they export to other states and overseas, Sanders said.
At the market …
As far as fruit sales, the “fickle” wholesale market — through packers Greene and Hemly and Prima Frutta — pays the bills, said Steve. Direct sales, under the Lucky You Orchards brand, make up 10 or 15 percent of volume but give them more control over prices.
The markets also serve as tasting venues for cider, attracting restaurateurs and retailers looking for local products. California regulations allow a certain level of cider sales at farm markets if a farm-based cidery grows its own fruit.
In fact, the family doubled down on farmers markets during the pandemic when restaurants closed. The cider was such a hit, they have continued, Adam said.
One of their marquee locations is the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, a boisterous market at the San Francisco ferry terminal where tourists, commuters and high-end chefs shop for everything from olive oil to nuts.
“Ferry Plaza is probably one of the most iconic farmers markets in California,” Andrea said.
In the family …
Alex grew up wanting to farm, asking his father about agricultural colleges as early as the third grade.
“I definitely idolized my dad,” he said.
Andrea and Adam enjoyed their farm childhoods but moved to San Francisco for white-collar careers, Adam at an advertising firm, Andrea at a software company. Both liked their jobs but had inherited an entrepreneurial bent from their mother, Allison, a real estate agent, as much as from their father.
“She taught us a balance between whimsy versus practicality,” Adam said.
While no single event prompted them to switch careers, all three kids felt family pull stronger when Allison started battling cancer. She died in 2018.
Adam, a longtime home brewer, moved back to San Francisco from Australia, where he worked for a couple of years and developed an interest in hard cider. He and his siblings started Far West with a U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development grant. He left his day job about 18 months later.
Andrea, also living in San Francisco, had already been helping with farm markets on the weekend but jumped in further when her mom got sick.
Excited for the business opportunity, Alex began grafting to find cider varieties suited to their climate. Some are extremely prone to fire blight, he said. The block still changes today, based on the shifting consumer tastes his two siblings track through their work.
“I realized if I was going to work so hard on something, I really wanted to do it for my family and see what we could accomplish together,” Andrea said. •
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