The future looks rosie
Ancient orchards and artisan producers have been pressed together to produce glorious cider
The renaissance of cider, by Eve Jones
From apple-bearing Roman invaders in AD43 to babies being baptised in Sussex cider in the 1300s, the history books overflow with mentions of the alcoholic drink. King Charles II declared his preference for the amber stuff over wine in the 1600s, as Briton Christopher Merret invented a cider fermentation method made in strengthened bottles that would later be adopted to make champagne. Adge Cutler’s Drink up thy Zider and the Coates Cider Company’s TV campaign in the 1970s – “Coates comes up from Somerset, where the cider apples grow” – sloshed their exaggerated Westcountry drawl about the British cider industry leaving an unfortunately primitive legacy at times. But championed by some true characters, artisan cider is fighting back across the nation, innovating and creating exciting, sophisticated products from the farm gate.
Coates was right in that many cider apples do come from Somerset, with the Westcountry widely regarded as the drink’s heartland. Traditionally, in the southeast food was produced for the London table market so, with land at a premium, the eating apple took precedence. Thus affordable, good growing regions of the Westcountry became covered with cider orchards growing varieties of apple that produce a high tannin drink of copper, amber and gold colour with intensity on the nose.
In 1894, there were 24,000 acres of orchard in Somerset; today, fewer than 3,000 remain. The county is still home to many producers, including Thatchers, Sheppy’s, Perry’s, the infamous Roger Wilkins’ rocket fuel plus small-scale producers and countless farm-gate cider makers yielding less than the 70 hectolitre duty threshold as a sideline. Many farms have a traceable cider history: the Sheppy family, for example, has made cider for 200 years and Martin Thatcher has traced his family’s cider legacy back to his great-great-grandfather, who was selling Thatcher’s cider in the 1800s.
taste of temperley
One business forging its own history is the Somerset Cider Brandy Company belonging to Julian Temperley. In the 1970s, the then sheep farmer and his wife, Diana, took over Pass Vale Farm from his great aunt. The farm has produced cider for 150 years but the Temperleys developed it into a prospering business. In less than 50 years they have expanded from 27 to 160 acres, grow 40 varieties of cider apple and produce varied award-winning products. In 1989, HM Customs granted Temperley the first full cider-distilling licence in recorded history
and in 2011 they received a PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) from the EU for their Somerset Cider Brandy.
When I visit the farm and distillery, which is situated at the foot of sycamore-topped landmark Burrow Hill near Kingsbury Episcopi, I open a wooden barn door to a rumble of washing and pressing and a sweet, appley tang. The shop is in an ancient barn stacked high with draught ciders, jugs, jars and beautifully labelled bottles on barrels just feet from the press. Temperley is found among the apples in old jeans, woollen jumper and shooting jacket and he welcomes me with a brisk explanation of the principles of cider making. He’s waiting for a potential client – a Polish merchant (much more interested and knowledgeable in the process than Brits, he says) who is interested in stocking Somerset Brandy – so we head to his house to wait.
I sit down and dog Fudge deposits himself on my lap while Temperley asks his wife, “Are you making us tea?” and promptly starts speaking about Brexit. He pauses, waves a hand towards his daughter who is stretched out on a sofa off the kitchen. “This is Matilda. She’s just back from Ghana. She’s been photographing leprosy victims.” One of four children, Matilda has described her childhood among the orchards and on the Somerset downs as feral. After studying biology at Edinburgh University, working in East Africa and Ethiopia and becoming an acclaimed documentary photographer (her book Under The Surface – Somerset Floods won the Royal Photographic Society’s Vic Odden Award in 2015), she is still never far from Burrow Hill for long.
This is true also of daughter Mary, founder of all-natural skin-care range MAKE; son Henry, creative director and founder of production company Sibling And Rival; and, most famously, clothes designer Alice, who launched her label Temperley London in 2000 and received an MBE in 2011. She lives just miles away and hosts an annual fancy dress party on the farm. The family are all known to muck in selling cider in the farm’s shop and a look at any of their Instagram streams ( The Good Life meets 1960s bohemia meets media savvy among the cider apples pictures) shows a real sense of their collective family passion and eccentricity. By friends, Temperley has been described as, “always up for the laugh” (he hosts an annual British naturism tour of the distillery) and “wonderfully un-pc” but touring the distillery, I see the blend of character and expert.
I find an intriguing blend of Somerset folklore and expert knowledge in him. We are introduced to the French copper stills, Josephine and Fifi (“you couldn’t call them Tracey or Sharon”), which are housed in a fortified, glass-fronted barn, he talks about Kingston Black, Stoke Red and Yarlington Mill apples, of how and specifically where they’re harvested on the farm and in detail about the barrelling of brandy as we taste three-, five-, 10- and 15-year-old treats.
In one breath he’s discussing blending apples, the next it’s DEFRA and Brexit, then we’re onto the legendary blue Cider Bus, the double-decker slice of Glastonbury history that’s been the cider bar to the Pyramid Stage since the festival’s inception. Temperley drives it there and sleeps on the top deck throughout the festival; the whole family, plus friends such as Jodie Kidd, have been known to work the bar. A breakdown en route one year caused genuine panic over the Twittersphere at the prospect of Burrow Hill and hot spicy cider not making it. Thankfully, they did.
Temperley’s diversification and modern vision extends to his methods and packaging, too. When the MSC Napoli container ship sunk off Devon in 2007, he bought washedup barrels and aged a 10-year-old brandy called Shipwreck in them; the labels for his 20- and 30-year brandies were designed by artists Damien Hirst and Gavin Turk. Outside the farm, their products are sold in numerous Somerset and Westcountry outlets and brandy is stocked in Fortnum & Mason, Harrods and Berry Bros & Rudd. Mark Hix is a huge fan, carrying Shipwreck and Morello cherries and Somerset Apple Eau De Vie – made especially for the Hix Fix cocktail – in his London restaurants, while the Somerset Pomona is on the menu at world-class restaurant Noma in Copenhagen.
This innovation and expansion during a period when cider was being marketed, in the main, as a product quite removed from the traditional drink is not to say Temperley was cider’s saviour. Nor indeed that good cider is the reserve of the Westcountry. In 2006, after a challenging 20 or 30 years for the industry, Magners’ £30 million UK marketing campaign acted as a catalyst. Launched during a summer of long, hot days and World Cup fever, packed pubs jangled to the sound of cider pouring over ice. “The
Harry Masters Jersey, Slack-ma-girdle, Foxwhelp, Hen’s Turds and Sheep’s Nose
proposition was all around being together, being something a younger consumer, mixed sex, could enjoy, share and have over ice as a ritual. It was something to be part of and the introduction of the concept, ‘Gosh cider can be a trendy drink’,” says Gabe Cook, formerly of the National Association of Cider Makers, now a full-time “ciderologist”.
In the succeeding years there was a spike in similar products – mainstream Strongbow types – heritage brands such as Westons and Aspall and tiny craft makers. Everyone saw the benefit and cider was on the up, though in recent more austere times, heritage and craft ciders have taken preference with consumers wanting more bang for their buck.
Cook is a consultant, educator and champion of the industry and a cider obsessive since his first sip of Old Rosie aged 10. “I am right on the Gloucestershire/herefordshire border and the heritage and tradition up here is of making a fine product. Yeah, there are lots of farmhouse producers but they make a good drop, it doesn’t have to be cloudy, it shouldn’t be cloudy, there’s no need for it to be vinegary, that’s bad, that’s wrong, that’s faulty.”
You can hear the passion in his voice. Cook has produced his own cider, worked for Ross-on-wye Cider and Perry Company, been assistant cider maker at Westons and cider communications manager with Heineken UK (Bulmers). He is emphatic about the quality cider being made across the country and about educating people about what’s out there. His image is quirky and knowledge extraordinary, both delivered with infectious enthusiasm. He’s previously worked on Jamie Oliver’s Drinks Tube and is cider expert on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch. “Last time I was on, there was a mild Twitter storm about my moustache – I think the Daily Express cover line was Hipster moustache klaxon!” But he is serious about cider. His new role as The Ciderologist sees him providing training services for cider makers, the wider drinks trade and for the consumer. He’ll also be writing and delivering a foundation level cider appreciation course.
box clever
The idea of taking real cider to the masses is one Ed Calvert of Crafty Nectar echoes. He founded the craft cider subscription box service after being disheartened by the mainstream brands available in London. Brought up on Dorset cider he toyed with the idea of producing his own but his brother-in-law and partner, James Waddington, suggested they should: “Open it up and educate people.” He soon realised that with huge numbers of producers within the industry staying under the 70 hectolitre duty threshold, it was a fantastically localised
industry. “You get guys like me who drank Dorset cider like Dorset Nectar but knew very little about Kentish ciders or Cotswold ciders. People don’t realise the brilliance of what’s out there.”
Calvert is passionate about encouraging the industry to innovate and look at ways of uniting cider with cider lovers. Initially, he would go out and find ciders by “looking for brands with cool labels and things. We wanted to bring things up to speed and modernise it. I felt if they had good labels and branding that they shared that similar vision.” Now he has five or six samples sent to him a week, from the Westcountry, Kent, Herefordshire, even Yorkshire and Norfolk, all made in different ways to different tastes. He sends out six- or 12-bottle boxes monthly and reckons he has enough producers and cider to not have to repeat the bottles in someone’s box for five years. Each cider comes with a brief history, tasting notes and information about how to drink it.
How cider is drunk is another important part of the industry’s progression. “It’s so complex, something as complex as wine, you would never drink wine from a pint glass,” says Calvert. “Although a lot are designed to be drunk from a pint there are others that should be drunk from a wine glass and cold. I want it to be served the right way and then you’d start to change the image.”
gospel practice
These are principles that Brock Bergius of Gospel Green Cyder shares. “It’s something that you drink like prosecco or champagne on a beautiful summer’s day, or with a nice dinner in the winter.” Bergius, born to the Teacher’s whisky family, bought the company in 2016 from long-time acquaintance James Lane on hearing that production of the sparkling cider was to cease. “When I found out that it was going to be shut down and disappear from the face of the earth it was an immediate response to save it.” The corked, double-fermented cider made in the same way as champagne sources its apples from the Blackmoor estate and is bottled half a mile away. “I can go back to our archives, which stretch to 1988, I could tell you every year Gospel Green was produced, where the apples came from, what the tasting notes were at crushing, at first and second stage.”
Previously made under the duty threshold, Bergius is now expanding the company and selling through selected shops and pubs. “I went to a pub with my dad and on the table next to us they were drinking it with their dinner. I asked them, ‘What do you think about it?’ They loved it. That’s why I bought it. Because I’m selfish and I wanted it but I’m also able to make sure everyone else who loves it continues to have it.”
Which, fundamentally, seems to be the aim of Temperley, Cook and Calvert, too: to deliver uniquely British artisan products to the wider public. There is a love, a rooted appreciation of the patchwork quilt of cider makers up and down the country that is bigger than business. It’s about heritage and pride in the history and provenance of each cider, its regions and individual method of manufacture. Beyond that, with such varied producers being championed, so our ancient orchards are being maintained and our countryside preserved.
As eccentric, connected, gentleman artisan cider maker Julian Temperley drove me back to the train station after my visit, he said, “Somerset cider makers are proud of their cider and really I’m just a Somerset hillbilly.” Which suggests to me that if regional hillbillies like him are the future of the cider industry, then the future is looking rosie.
‘It’s something that you drink like champagne on a summer’s day’