Pressing Apple Cider at Riley's Los Rios Rancho. Oak Glen, CA
DETAILS:
Location: Riley’s Los Rios Rancho - 39611 Oak Glen Road, Oak Glen, CA, 92399
Hours of Operation:
Off Season - December thru July; Daily 10AM to 5PM
Apple Season - August thru November 9AM to 5PM
Cider Pressing available September thru November on weekends from 11AM to 4PM
Parking: Free parking lot.
Cost: Cider Pressing: $20 for plastic gallon container & $25 for glass jar. (Please see their website below under “resources” for current pricing)
Time Commitment: The cider pressing will only take about 30 minutes. But if you’re making the effort to head out to Oak Glen, I suggest you plan on at least a 1/2 day or longer to explore all the various apple orchards, shops, eateries, and other points of interest in the area.
Miscellaneous: Riley’s offers numerous products, activities and events throughout the year. Please see their website below for more details, schedule & pricing.
Before relaying our pressed cider experience at Riley’s Los Rios Rancho, I’d be doing you a great disservice if I didn’t spend a little time talking about Oak Glen itself. Located in the San Bernardino Mountains just east of Yucaipa, Oak Glen is California’s apple county. A single five mile stretch of road loops around the entire community, populated by apple farms, restaurants, shops, and historical landmarks of local significance. As you drive the loop, apple orchards extending in every direction, you’ll want to make a stop at each destination whether it’s to get a giant slice of apple pie at one of Oak Glen’s signature restaurants; Apple Annie’s, or to dine on a meal that George Washington might have enjoyed at the Hawk’s Head Tavern, complete with colonial reenactments to keep you entertained.
Oak Glen almost feels like it could be it’s very own agricultural theme park and it has a little bit of something for everyone. The closest experience I can compare it to is like taking a wine trip up to Santa Barbara or Napa, but instead of grapes, Oak Glen’s existence is based around the apple and the tourism it attracts, so it’s definitely more family friendly than those drunken vineyard excursions (which are also fun). Similar to those wine trips, the main attraction in Oak Glen are its apple farms (nearly a dozen in total) which you’ll visit just like a winery. Each apple farm offers their own assortment of entertainment, activities, food, gifts, and anything else that revolves around the apple. While you can visit Oak Glen anytime of the year, the primes months to go are obviously during apple season which typically runs from Labor Day through Thanksgiving and culminates with an Apple Butter Festival on the last weekend of November. This is when the town is fully up & running with a complete slate of offerings.
Which brings us back to Riley’s Los Rios Rancho and their pressed cider experience. The Riley’s are one of the founding families of Oak Glen and you’ll find their name everywhere in town. Los Rios Rancho is over 100 years old and is famed for being Southern California’s largest apple farm. During apple season, the weekends at Los Rios Rancho seem almost like Mardi Gras with the hustle & bustle of people merrily taking advantage of every taste, sight, and sound. It’s also during apple season that you can press a gallon’s worth of your own cider. You’ll go through the entire process from picking out the apples you’ll use, followed by the apple grinding, which is followed by the eponymous apple pressing, leading all the way to end where you’ll pour your cider to take home with you. My instructors were quite the characters which only made the experience all the more fun. Oh, and by the way, the cider was delicious!
