Virtue Cider closes farm, brand to continue on
Greg Hall closes the chapter on one of craft cider’s most storied destinations — but the cider lives on.
Greg Hall has had Virtue Cider taken from him once before. This time, he’s the one walking away.
On April 14, Hall sent a direct message to his mailing list confirming that Virtue Farm in Fennville, Michigan has been sold and will not reopen in 2026. The on-site cider shop is closed. Online sales are done. The Cider Society is finished. After 13 years, the farm experience that made Virtue a genuine farm-based cider pilgrimage is over.
But the brand isn’t dead.
Virtue Cider will continue through distribution – M4 in Michigan, Brew City in Illinois – while Hall works to find a new production partner. The liquid will survive, but the farm will not.
It has been happening a bit more in the beer/cidery industry – a location closes but the brand will live on to find a glass in the near future.
The Anheuser-Busch merry-go-round
Hall built Virtue as a second act after leaving Goose Island, the Chicago brewery built by his father John Hall after the 2011 acquisition by Anheuser-Busch. He set down roots in Fennville’s apple country and built something genuinely intentional: a working farm, a cidery, European-inspired ciders made with Michigan apples, live music nights. It was like wine country. But Michigan based, and with more apples.
Then… AB InBev came calling again. Facing financial pressure in 2015, Hall sold a controlling stake in Virtue to Anheuser-Busch, and by September 2017 the company owned it outright. It looked like another craft story swallowed by big red.
Plot twist. Quietly, in August 2023, Greg Hall reacquired Virtue Cider from Anheuser-Busch, a deal Beer Street Journal reported when it surfaced. Hall had gotten his cidery back. “Moving forward, we’ll continue to focus on what we’ve always done,” Hall said at the time.
Less than three years later, the farm has been sold.
Hall’s farewell letter is gracious and genuine. He thanks investors, apple growers, suppliers, bands, distributors, and retailers, closing with a quote from Keats: ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever.’
Beer Street Journal visited Virtue Farm, and it was exactly that — peaceful, delicious, and the kind of place that made the craft beverage culture feel worth defending.
The broader backdrop isn’t pretty either. The Brewers Association just reported a 5.1% decline in craft beer production in 2025 and 2.9% fewer operating craft breweries than the year prior. The destination taproom model continues to struggle. Virtue’s farm was always the kind of experience.
Greg Hall fought to get Virtue back. Now he’s letting the farm go while keeping the name alive. Whether that works depends entirely on finding the right production partner and whether consumers follow the cider without the destination behind it.