Three Hundred & Forty Acres of Florida Sun, in the Hargrove Family Since 1974
Shop the HarvestA Letter from the Grove
My grandmother told me never to apologize for the season — and never to lie about the bottle.
My name is Eleanor Hargrove, and I am the third generation to wake up on this land. Our family has been pressing citrus along Indian River Boulevard since 1974, when my grandfather bought forty acres of sour orange rootstock and a rusted FMC harvester, and my grandmother started selling single-strength juice out of a chest freezer in the front yard.
Fifty years on, the chest freezer is a museum piece. The grove is now three hundred and forty acres, and the press is a 22,000-square-foot SQF Level 3 facility. But the rules my grandmother wrote on a piece of masking tape and stuck to the wall of the packing house are still taped to that wall. They read, in her handwriting: Pick it ripe. Press it cold. Bottle it once. Tell the truth on the label.
We have been offered, over the decades, to sell to the great consolidated juice companies. Twice in the nineties, once in 2008, and again in 2021. We refused each time — not out of romance, but because we have tasted what happens to Florida citrus when a harvest is timed for a truck schedule rather than a tree. The flavor leaves. The clarity leaves. The family leaves.
So we still hand-pick, every morning, with a crew that has worked these rows for an average of nineteen years. We still drive the fruit less than nine miles to the press. And we still guarantee, on every bottle we ship, that it was cold-pressed within four hours of being pulled from the tree.
If you are reading this, you have probably tasted us — at a friend's counter in Brooklyn, on the menu of a small restaurant in Charleston, or in the glass case at Erewhon. Thank you for taking the time to ask where the juice came from. The answer is: here, and from this family, for as long as we are allowed to keep it.
— Eleanor Hargrove, third generation
Vero Beach, Florida · January 2026
The Inheritance
Four Generations, One Grove
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Chapter I
1974
The Forty Acres
Walter and Margaret Hargrove purchase a worn forty-acre sour orange grove at the edge of Vero Beach, install a single hand-cranked press, and begin selling unpasteurized juice by the jug to neighbors on Indian River Boulevard. The first label reads, simply: From our grove to your glass.
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Chapter II
1992
The Hundred-Acre Lease
Walter Jr. leases the adjacent hundred acres and rebuilds the operation around cold-press hydraulic presses. The family is the first in Indian River County to certify flash-pasteurization at 161°F — preserving live enzymes that standard HPP lines strip out within hours of bottling.
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Chapter III
2008
The Estate Groves
Eleanor and her cousin James consolidate three hundred and forty contiguous acres into a single estate designation and break ground on the 22,000-sq-ft SQF Level 3 facility. The Indian River region becomes the only U.S. citrus terroir recognized under EU GI protection standards.
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Chapter IV
Today
The Working Grove
The fourth generation is now in the orchard — a UC Davis-trained food scientist leads our four-person R&D lab, and seventy-eight full-time team members cold-press 1.8 million bottles a year for 1,400+ retailers and 240 Michelin-starred restaurants, with zero waste: every peel is pressed into our citrus bitters.
Terroir & Technique
Why Indian River County, and Why Within Four Hours.
Geography is a flavor. The mineral-loam soils along this stretch of the Treasure Coast — drained by the Indian River Lagoon and brackished by the Atlantic — produce citrus with a higher sugar-to-acid ratio than almost any other U.S. growing region. The European Union has formally recognized this: Indian River County is the only American citrus terroir to hold EU GI-protected status.
- Four-hour guarantee. Every bottle is cold-pressed within four hours of hand-picking. The grove sits nine miles from the press — a guarantee we can make because we own the route.
- 161°F flash-pasteurization. We flash-pasteurize at 161°F for eleven seconds — hot enough to lock in shelf stability, gentle enough to retain 3.2× the live enzymes of standard HPP brands. No raw claim here; only precision.
- Single-estate, never blended. A bottle of Indian River Juice contains juice from this grove and this grove only. There is no pooling from other regions, no carry-over from last season's concentrate, no anonymous supply chain.
By the Numbers
The Estate in Numbers
From the Grove to You
Taste the Estate.
Three ways to bring the harvest home — each one begins with the same fruit, pressed the same morning, bottled on the same line.
Shop the Harvest
Single-origin bottles, gift sets, and the flagship 12-pack — shipped within forty-eight hours of pressing, in 100% recyclable glass.
The Subscription Box
A new pressing delivered to your door each month. Skip, pause, or rotate varietals — every box ships at the peak of its season.
Wholesale Inquiries
For retailers, chefs, and hospitality groups — the same estate juice served at 240 Michelin-starred restaurants, delivered on your schedule.