Things at Bishop Cider Co. will be getting a little more interesting in the coming months. Owner Joel Malone is expanding his business, opening a second location near the Medical District on Irving Boulevard. Malone signed the lease just two months after opening his first location in Bishop Arts last year. Demand quickly outpaced his available space.
"We've had a lot of request for packaged stuff," Malone said, noting the new space will have the capability to bottle his ciders. "We also want more flexibility with our brewing," he added, alluding to the barrel-aged ciders that will be available this coming fall should the new location open on schedule.
The new cidery (the old location will eventually be referred to as a tap house) will have space for whiskey, tequila, wine and other barrels Malone plans to use to age ciders for extended periods of time, imparting new flavors. The new location will also have a press, allowing Malone to press new fruits in an expanded capacity. A grapefruit and mint cider, and ciders with other specialty fruits, should be available at Bishop Cider Co. in the future. There will also be tours on the weekends, but the new facility isn't where you'll want to hang out and sip cider for an extended session.
The new location may be big, but it lacks the neighborhood aesthetic of the first location and Malone says zoning issues kept him from opening the brewery in the Bishop Arts District. "I would prefer to have one larger location in Oak Cliff," he said. But to accomplish that he'd have to have the potential new address rezoned -- a process that would add significant cost and effort to opening the second location. No zoning changes were required in the Medical District where Malone will soon be set to produce his cider.
Malone hopes to have the new space operating sometime in June, but admits his first cidery took significantly longer than he expected to open. "I know how this goes," he said. Still, he's hopeful that his customers will be sipping on barrel-aged ciders in the fall. "We haven't been able to experiment with that at all yet," he said, referring to the seemingly limitless flavor combinations available for old barrels and new ingredients. "At the moment nothing is off limits."
