Travel Blog - Mr & Mrs Smith Boutique & Luxury Hotels

Five or so years ago, cider drinkers were generally treated with the kind of uneasy suspicion normally afforded to plague carriers, teenage hoodies and over-friendly cousins. Thanks to the marketing efforts of Magners, Bulmers and their ilk, however, cider is acceptable again, even bordering on a discerning option for bar-hopping urbanites. Strongbow on tap? Sooo mid-nineties. Today, Britain’s pub-goers are more likely to demand pints of Addlestone’s Cloudy, Weston’s Old Rosie, or Aspall’s Draught.

It’s not just the mass-producers that are benefiting from the brewing industry’s rediscovery of the apple, but the large number of small producers, farms and orchards throughout Kent and the West Country, that have been happily rolling out the barrels of fermented fruit juice for decades are also happily piggy-backing the trend.

Not long ago, I spent a weekend in a grab-me-a-canvas beautiful stretch of the Wye Valley in Herefordshire, at Broome Farm, home of the Ross Cider & Perry Company, a small producer on the edge of Wales. I’m not normally a cider-drinker – to me it’s always tasted a bit like fizzy sick – but I was interested enough in the process of making the stuff to feel enthusiastic about helping out with the harvest and learning about apple pressing.

Although it’s a fairly small operation, Broome Farm’s orchards sprawl over 65 acres of countryside, comprising more than 70 varieties of apple and several thousand trees. Most of these are harvested on behalf of Bulmers, but at the end of each summer, Mike, the farm’s owner, and his amicable bunch of employees go out into the orchard on their hands and knees to collect the trailer-loads of windfalls that accumulate beneath the trees. These are then washed and plunged into a menacing-looking apple-chipping machine. The actual pressing is conducted in the same manner it has for the last 800 years – heaps of the ruddy pulp are wrapped in thick cloth, these parcels are piled up high and then gradually squashed in a giant vise that’s confusingly called a ‘cheese press’ (precisely because it’s the same method used in making cheese).

After that, it’s simply a matter of collecting the juice in buckets, pouring it into barrels, and waiting for the magic to happen. No additives, no extra sugar, no forced carbonation, just the natural miracle of fermentation. It’s almost too easy. The tricky part is combining the right variety of apples to create a palatable flavour – and most cider apples taste like Satan’s underwear before they’re pressed.

An afternoon’s tasting dismisses all my anti-cider prejudices in one fell glug. I learned that:

• Real cider is not oversweet fizzy dog wee, but actually offers an endlessly varied ballet of flavours, ranging from sharp and zingy to smooth and savoury, stopping at every tastebud in between. Who knew?
• The stuff you get in pubs is made from concentrated apple juice and laced with sugar, which in my book makes it evil.
• Over-consumption of cider may be the only explanation for the naming of some apple varieties: Foxwhelp, Knotted Kernal, and Balls Bittersweet are among my favourites.
• Although you may be told that proper cider is a hangover-free beverage, this is a lie.
• Real cider and Morris dancing are, however, eerily connected.

After sampling seven or eight varieties, including a super-strength perry and a curious batch fermented in whisky barrels, I was converted. (I was also delighted to learn that the farm would happily bottle up the cider I’d helped pick and press in time for my wedding next year, in bottles labelled with my own design, so now I can help convert my guests too.)

If you happen to be hanging around the Welsh border (maybe staying in one of Mr & Mrs Smith’s sexy boutique hotels in the Cotswolds or Gloucestershire), I’d highly recommend spending a lazy, liquid afternoon at Broome Farm (01989 567232) – group tastings are held by arrangement for £2 a head (eight people minimum), but if you turn up at any time before 6pm you can pick up bottles from the cellar or sample cider straight from the barrel. Just tell ‘em Smith sent you.

Photos: Jacqueline Palmer

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Cotswolds, Eating & drinking, Uncategorized, Worth getting out of bed for. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.