It’s hard to believe that having enough water is an issue at Banditry Cider in Gibsons, B.C. The craft cidery is on a rural property with rows of apple trees, a huge pond filled with ducks, and as James Armstrong surveys the place on a rainy spring day, his boots are covered in mud.
“I assumed because it was Gibsons and we bought this place in the winter, I was like, ‘it’s always wet here.’ And I grew up here and there were never water issues.”
Armstrong bought the property five years ago. He and his staff make the cider on site, mostly from apples grown in the Okanagan. It’s also a gathering place in the summer, with a food truck, fire pits and events.
While water wasn’t an issue when they bought the place, it quickly became one, he says.
In five of the last eight summers, the Sunshine …