It’s shaping up to be a sweet partnership for two Nova Scotia businesses.
Saltbox Brewery and Hazzberry Farms have come together to create a Haskap berry cider, Haskap Cider. The cider was released last fall and the NSLC selected it for their spring program which is very competitive, said Andrew Tanner, Founder of Mahone Bay’s Saltbox Brewery.
The cider will be carried in all 100 NSLC locations across the province.
Tanner says they like to support local and Hazzberry Farms fits that bill. The cooperative includes 26 Haskap growers in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
“They are a group of small farms-farmers growing small crops of berries-so it was important to us to support them,” he said.
The Haskap berry is actually an edible blue honeysuckle native to northern hemisphere countries including Canada, Japan and Russia. It is gaining a lot of popularity in Nova Scotia.
Joe Piotti, President of Hazzberry Farms, said the berry has attracted attention for a couple of reasons.
“It’s relatively new, and new things always attract people’s attention and it truly has a lot of wonderful health benefits. I think that society is very conscientious about the nutrition and the food they eat and this berry provides a great deal of that,” he said.
Piotti says that creating a product grown, produced, sold and consumed here will have a big economic impact on Nova Scotia, particularly rural areas.
“That is the true benefit-we have farmers benefiting from this and from that perspective they are being productive and successful, they are hiring workers, they are buying inputs to run their orchards successfully and now you have an organization producing a quality product with local ingredients.”
