Betting The Farm: Why A Northport Cherry Grower Is Going All In On Cherry Vinegar

Phil Hallstedt and his wife Sarah have a saying: “We don’t go to the casinos because we’re cherry farmers; we’re already gambling every day.” Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the Hallstedts are willing to take a big bet in hopes of saving their farm, the U-pick cherry destination Hallstedt Homestead Cherries in Northport.

Last week, at an event at 20Fathoms in Traverse City, the Hallstedts officially launched a new phase for Red Truck Orchards, the brand behind their new house-made cherry vinegar. That product will get a steady rollout in the coming months, building from the several-dozen bottles hitting the market this week to the thousands that will ship this fall as part of a statewide distribution plan. It’s a Hail Mary pass for the Hallstedts, who believe Red Truck Orchards could be the key not just to saving their farm, but small northern Michigan cherry farms in general.

The story of Red Truck Orchards began in late 2022, when Phil and Sarah’s two daughters were both “getting really into shrubs,” a type of non-alcoholic cocktail mixer that combines “any kind of vinegar, some kind of fruit, and some kind of sweetener.” As Phil explains it, the Hallstedt daughters were looking to cut back on their alcohol intake and were drawn to shrubs for their uses in mocktail recipes.

“I was really intrigued with these shrubs my daughters were making, but Sarah does not like the strong taste of vinegar,” Phil tells The Ticker. “The vinegar they were using, apple cider vinegar, was just too harsh for her.”

Sarah’s distaste for the shrub lifestyle got Phil thinking: What if he could use his own farm-grown cherries to make a more gentle, approachable vinegar? He started experimenting with small batches, using Sarah his go-to taste tester.

“She said, ‘I still don't like vinegar, but boy, that tastes a lot better to me than apple cider vinegar,’” Phil says of one of the early batches. “So, I kept developing it.”

Soon, Hallstedt was recruiting collaborators. His first call was to Courtney Lorenz, owner and operator of Cultured Kombucha, who helped him “hone in on the flavor profile” for the vinegar. He also connected with Samuel Reese, a craft beer industry veteran with stints at Bell’s Brewery and Upper Hand Brewing under his belt, and a vinegar enthusiast to boot. Last spring, Reese came aboard as director of operations for Red Truck.

Long term, Phil hopes Red Truck Orchards will become the umbrella under which multiple local cherry farms collaborate to produce the value-added product that is cherry vinegar. That’s not happening yet. So far, all the vinegar has been made with Hallstedt cherries, starting last summer with a small pilot phase and growing this year into more of a commercial operation.

But Hallstedt foresees “outgrowing the cherries that I can produce,” which is where other growers come in. If all goes according to plan, he explains, “we can buy their fruit at a higher price than what they're getting right now.” Participating farms could then sell Red Truck vinegar on their own farms – and take a cut of the profits from distribution.

If there’s a barrier to that vision, Hallstedt says, it’s that “making good vinegar at scale is extremely difficult.” That’s due mostly to the science. In the Hallstedts’ case, the process starts with the fruit – whole, pitted, skin-on tart cherries – which then go through a double fermentation. The first fermentation produces cherry wine. The second converts the alcohol to acetic acid, eventually producing vinegar as a byproduct.

Key to the second fermentation is what is known in the vinegar world as “the mother,” which Hallstedt describes as “a floating matrix of acetic acid bacteria.” It's the mother that acts on the alcohol and converts the ethanol l to acetic acid, leading to vinegar. The finnicky part is that not every strain of the mother is created equal.

“We are curating a strain of the mother that loves cherries and cherry vinegar, and refining it so that it produces the most flavorful, most productive vinegar,” Hallstedt explains. “It’s very much like a craft brewery, in that there's many batches that we abandon, because the strain of mother in that batch isn't meeting our quality specs. Other strains we have are great producers, and create the quality and the quantity we need. Then we cultivate and curate and multiply them. So, it's an iterative process in terms of what we're doing, but we are finally getting to the point where we can start releasing vinegar.”

The key to scaling up production for Red Truck Orchards has been accumulating enough of the specially-curated strain of the mother to produce vinegar in bulk. That wasn’t happening a year ago, when, during their pilot phase, the Hallstedts were producing just five-gallon batches of vinegar out of a rented commercial kitchen in Omena. This year, they’ve been able to ramp things up, thanks in part to a new commercial production facility right on their farm property, equipped with multiple 350-gallon fermentation tanks.

But the ramp-up has come with a significant price tag, and even with grant support from 20Fathoms and the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD), Hallstedt is blunt about what that investment means.

“We are literally betting the farm,” he says.

Regardless of the gamble, the Hallstedts are confident in the ability of their new product to gain traction. Recently, they’ve been serving up vinegar slushies at local farmer’s markets, and getting a hugely positive response. Hallstedt has also gotten interest from local chefs, from the culinary program at Northwestern Michigan College, and even from individuals who use vinegar for gut health.

Win or lose, Hallstedt says things have gotten dire enough for local cherry farmers that an aggressive move was necessary. With another bad crop year looking likely – “The cherry harvest this year is a huge disappointment, and for many farmers, it's a disaster,” he says – Phil thinks a value-add like Red Truck Orchards could be the life raft the entire local cherry industry needs.

“Our farm has never been in the black, and the reality is that we can't continue to put money into it forever; we don't have that kind of wealth,” he concludes. “I was actually ready to throw in the towel two or three years ago, but Sarah was not. She told me, ‘Phil, something's going to come along and we're going to be able to make this place work.’ And I think this vinegar is that something.”