The pumpkin farm beside Exit 69 of the Long Island Expressway is about to be something no other farm in the Town of Brookhaven is: a licensed cidery. On September 8, the New York State Liquor Authority issued a farm cidery license for 191 South Street in Manorville, the 31-acre spread that Long Island families know as Prime Pasture Farm. Twelve days later, on September 20, the farm opens for its fall season.

The license was issued to Prime Acres Inc., a Suffolk County corporation, under permit 0025-26-153769. It took effect the day it was issued and runs through August 2029. It is the first liquor license of any kind on the property.

What a farm cidery license actually allows

New York created the farm cidery license to do for apples what the farm brewery and farm winery licenses did for hops and grapes: let a working farm make hard cider from New York-grown fruit and pour it where it was made. The holder can produce cider, offer tastings and sell it on the property, which turns a farm stand into a place where the adults get a proper glass while the kids run the corn maze.

That combination is rarer on Long Island than you might expect. State license records show just four active farm cidery licenses in all of Nassau and Suffolk. The other three sit far out east: Windy Acres Orchard and City Cider House in Calverton, both in the Town of Riverhead, and Matchbook Distilling in Greenport. Nassau County has none. Prime Pasture's license is the only one in the Town of Brookhaven, which makes it the westernmost farm cidery on Long Island, and the closest one to almost everybody who lives here.

The farm at Exit 69

Prime Pasture Farm is a family-owned operation that has become one of the busier fall destinations on the middle of the Island. The formula is the one that fills a Saturday: unlimited hayrides, a corn maze, pumpkins picked off the vine rather than off a pallet, a jump pad, farm animals and a food lineup heavy on apple cider donuts. The farm runs its season on weekends and holidays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and this year that season starts Saturday, September 20.

Drinks have been part of the farm's fall pitch before, but always somebody else's. Past seasons brought beer tastings with Blue Point Brewing and events with Northport's Sand City Brewery, and the hot cider at the counter has come from Jericho Cider Mill, the 206-year-old operation this publication wrote about in July. What the farm has never been able to do is pour something fermented that it made itself. The new license is the piece of paper that changes that.

What the license does not say

A license is capacity, not a menu. The farm has not yet announced what its cider program will look like, whether the first pours land this season or next, or what the fruit sourcing will be. New York's farm cidery rules require the apples to be state grown, and plenty of new license holders spend their first months getting production running before anything reaches a glass. The honest way to read the timing is this: the paperwork cleared twelve days before the busiest stretch of the farm's year begins, and that is unlikely to be an accident.

The corporate side moved on the same schedule a farm business usually does. Prime Acres Inc. was registered with the state in January 2023, and the license application worked its way through the Liquor Authority to an issue date that landed the week before opening weekend.

Why this is bigger than one farm

Long Island grows a lot of apples, and almost all of the drinking built on them happens in two towns at the East End. If you live in Huntington, Babylon, Islip or anywhere in Nassau, a cidery visit has meant committing to the North Fork. Manorville sits at the seam where the Expressway meets the Pine Barrens, close enough that a cidery there changes the math of a fall afternoon for most of the Island.

It also extends a pattern this year has kept producing: Long Island farms and food businesses adding a license to become the finished version of themselves. A farm that sells you the pumpkin and the donut, and can now legally hand you a hard cider made on the property, is a different trip than a farm stand with a cash box.

What to watch for

The farm's fall season opens Saturday, September 20, and runs weekends and holidays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 191 South Street in Manorville, just off Exit 69. The cidery license became active September 8. Whatever the first pour turns out to be, and whenever it arrives, the farm's own channels will say it first, and a fall Saturday out east just got one more reason to take the exit.