Acclaimed Cornish brewery Sharp’s of Rock near Padstow has teamed up with Cornish Orchards to produce a cider for the UK market.
Orchard Cider is made from 100% local cider apples and is being trialled in selected outlets in Cornwall and Devon.
Joe Keohane, of Sharp’s, said: “Our introduction to Cornish Orchards was the Eden Project. We are incredibly proud of the cider produced as a result of this partnership.” Orchard Cider is the only draft cider available at local tourist attraction the Eden Project.
Sharp’s said there are plans to extend the distribution of Orchard Cider next year.
Another brewery, Bath’s Abbey Ales has launched Hell’s Bells, produced by the Tricky Cider Company, situated in the Blackdown Hills in Somerset.
Abbey Ales managing director Alan Morgan said of his company’s new product: “We will be offering it to our existing customers initially, and in our own pubs, the Star, the Coeur De Lion and The Assembly Inn.” Distribution will be extended later in the year.
Matt Helliwell on the ukcider email discussion group pointed us to an interesting article on the BBC website about the National Trust campaign to retain what’s left of the country’s traditional orchards.
Orchard losses ‘threaten species’
Traditional fruit orchards are vanishing from England’s landscape – with serious consequences for wildlife, conservationists have warned.
The National Trust says 60% have disappeared since the 1950s, putting local varieties of apples, cherries, pears, plums and damsons under threat. It is launching a £536,000 drive to reverse the decline of the orchards. Their trees provide important habitats for species such as the noble chafer beetle and lesser spotted woodpecker.
The orchards – some with as few as five trees – also offer sources of pollen and nectar to bees, which are thought to be declining partly because of a lack of suitable food. Pressure from commercial fruit growers has led many small-scale producers to develop their orchards or convert them to other uses.
Author James Russell contacted me about research for a new book about cider. A previous book called “Manmade Eden – Historic Orchards in Somerset and Gloucestershire” is well worth a mention at this point. It features interviews with John Thatcher and Julian Temperley, lots of great pictures and material on the history of cider that I think readers would enjoy.
The West Country is famed for its orchards, but why are they here? As the campaign to save and celebrate English orchards gathers momentum, this book explores their fascinating and – until now – neglected history. Why is Glastonbury known as Avalon, the Isle of Apples? What made Redstreak Cyder the most popular drink of the seventeenth century? Who was Dr Ashmead, cultivator of the connoisseur’s favourite apple, Ashmead’s Kernel? How did a Somerset vicar come to make cider for Queen Victoria? This rich, wide-ranging book takes a long historic look at changing fashions and fortunes – asking why thirteenth-century monks and Edwardian landowners planted orchards, and why post-war governments paid farmers to destroy them. The author argues that Apple Day (October 21) should be made our national autumn holiday. He examines the role of Common Ground, the National Trust and other organisations in preserving and restoring orchards, and asks: what can we do to make our orchards as profitable as they were in centuries past?
Pruning the bramley, famous cooking apple. Red flush, good quality cooking apple, ripens to yellow sweetness if kept long enough. Challenging tree. Space between the trees. Planted 10 years ago. The bramley is a big tree. In an ordinary garden you may want to put it on a small rootstock.
Each year we want the tree to do three thing. Produce new growth, formation of new buds , and fruit on old buds. Bramley is a tip bearing tree so don’t go round snipping off all the tips that’s the wrong way to prune it. Take out downward growing branches. Or any too high. We don’t go up trees with ladders any more.
Part 4 of Stephen Hayes Fruitwise videos about pruning apple trees.
Looking at the pruning saw, more important than the secteurs. Needs to be sharp or else not fit for purpose. Cut on the back stroke. Japanese silky fox. Removing a branch which is to low, to show how to use the saw. Not touching the tree. Stabalise by holding the branch. It goes right through in two cuts. Definitive pruning cut up against the collar.
Part three of Stephen Hayes video series “The Fruitwise guide to pruning apple trees”
Spur pruning. Fruit buds turn into spurs after a few years then get crowded. Overgrown spur systems need to be thinned. Cut out the lower groups to produce only 3 or 4 apples per system instead of 8 or 9
Recent Comments