Christchurch City Libraries invites you to check out a 15-minute lounge chat with a unique and outstanding person from our community; a Living Book. Their interests cover music, art, film, social advocacy, the environment, entrepreneurship and so much more.

Wade Blackler

image used with permission of Wade Blackler - personal collection

I was introduced to homebrewing through my mates and from there my interest grew into a passion. My sister and brother-in-law bought some property, planted some English cider apple trees and we decided to have a crack at large scale cider production. What started as a 2000liter batch snowballed to where we are today. Being able to create a unique product that’s both sourced and sold in our local environment is important to me.

The things I love about this enterprise are that I am my own boss and it’s really exciting when people like and buy my product. Being awarded a Bronze at the NZ Cider Award for our Ginger Pippin in the first year of production was pretty special too.

Initially it was hard as in my case I was working two jobs while trying to grow a business in an industry that I was new to. I was highly influenced by Richard Emerson aka “the Hopfather” and pretty much every other small fish in a big sea that accomplishes their goals

I believe in reasons and seasons. Learning as we go and making mistakes along the way is the only way we’ve gained the wisdom and know how to streamline production/ make things better for our business.

Ages: All welcome - Youth aged 14 years and under, must be accompanied by a caregiver

Cost: $FREE

Special information:

Agreement to the Terms and conditions is required to participate.
If you would like to make multiple bookings, each booking will need to be made separately on each of the 'Living Book's' own booking pages. Visit our profile to see the other 'Living Books'.

Important information:

Cancellations - Please provide at least 48 hours notice to cancel your booking. If due to circumstances outside of our control, we need to cancel the event, we will make contact with customers as soon as possible
Sold Out? Join Waitlist - There is a limited waitlist available for this programme. If places are still available you will be prompted to 'Join Waitlist' after clicking the 'Register' button