Our philosophy is simple: whole foods make the best medicine!

Shire City Herbals grew out of our own self care. Dana St. Pierre began making early versions of Fire Cider in the 90's to combat his yearly bouts of bronchitis and seasonal allergies. Through the years Dana tinkered with his Fire Cider recipe to make it both medicinally potent and palatable, adding a few new twists to the traditional base of apple cider vinegar and honey. In December of 2010 our friends at Alchemy Initiative in Pittsfield MA invited Dana and his wife Amy Huebner, a holistic health coach, to sell their herbals teas, tinctures and Fire Cider at the annual Handmade Holiday Festival. To Amy and Dana’s great surprise, many of the people who sampled the Fire Cider at the festival bought some and they soon sold out!

Shire City Herbals was incorporated in January of 2011 with help from Dana’s sister Erin, Amy’s brother Brian and Dr. James Huebner, father and financial adviser. Fire Cider is truly a small family business; from the start-up capital our family contributed we were able, over the next nine months, to slog our way through the seemingly endless paperwork, lab tests, licenses applications and bureaucracy to a finished product that was ready to sell.

Brian, a comic artist who runs the site AFineExample.com, didn’t know what he was getting himself into when he agreed to help his sisterAmy by creating the labels for Fire Cider. It was a long process, with more revisions than we thought possible but the end result is a unique, fun label with Brian’s original comic characters representing the different sized bottles.

Dana, Amy and Brian began selling Fire Cider in stores in Septemberof 2011. After just a year Fire Cider can be found in almost 100 retail outlets, in every state in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Ohio!You can check out the map of locations and links to our fine retail stores on our Retail page. Amy, Dana and Brian spend a day every week producing Fire Cider at the Community Development Kitchen in Greenfield MA. We all take turns attending festivals like The Big E and The New Amsterdam Market in downtown Manhattan.

All three of the current Fire Cider team went to school for a variety of things:

Dana is a certified Yoga teacher and Reiki master. He studied everything from herbs to permaculture to massage therapy at the Southwest Institute for Healing Arts in Arizona.

Amy earned a Bachelor’s degree from New York University in English Literature and later a certificate from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York City.

Brian studied linguistics at McGill University, he speaks French and some German and he also studied fine art in Florence for a spell.

About Our Packaging: The amber glass bottles that we package our tonic in not only look cool, they are completely recyclable, even the plastic caps! The brown glass protects from damage due to sunlight so you can keep your bottle anywhere. We would love to forgo the shrink bands that we are required to use to seal the caps. We hope to soon replace those with something that is compostable or recyclable.

When we ship to you, our wholesale and retail customers, we use recyclable (and sometimes recycled!) cardboard boxes and wrapping paper as well as packing peanuts made from food starch. These peanuts can be reused or easily composted at home. Sometimes we will ship smaller orders in bubble wrap to ensure they get to you in one piece because no one wants to get a vinegar soaked box full of glass shards. Rest assured that we are continually looking for sustainable, earth friendly packaging, from our recipe books printed on post consumer paper to our labels made by Creative Labels of Vermont.

Our Ingredients: We use only organic, domestic produce to make Fire Cider as healthful as possible. We buy local, raw, wildflower honey from Merrimack Valley Apiary in Billerica MA directly from the bee keeper. We are still looking for a local provider (in the New England area) for the raw, organic, unpasteurized, living apple cider vinegar that is the base of Fire Cider.

Currently the only company to meet our quality and quantity needs is Spectrum Organics. Health is the greatest wealth and we know for certain that Michael Pollan was right when he said that there is nothing more expensive than cheap food. We aim to provide you with a product that is pure, unadulterated, eye opening, whole foods awesomeness. Here’s to feelin’ good, all the time!