Cider by Rosie - A brief history
Early Life
I became caught up with the wonder of the orchard in my early childhood in Huntingdonshire. The back garden of the cottage where we lived was surrounded by orchards growing Victoria plums. Mother, a passionate gardener, filled the flowerbeds around the lawn of the little garden, with a great variety of flowers. I have colourful early memories of roses, delphiniums, lupins and foxgloves, set against the dark background of the 
mysterious orchards. In the summertime my brother and I followed the progress of the forbidden fruit beyond the flowers, with great anticipation of the pleasure that lay ahead. We could not resist the temptation to make furtive forays, behind the cover provided by the tall plants, in order to test the plums as soon as any degree of redness became noticeable. These tastings became less and less of a disappointment, until at last the golden-rosiness and the fully succulent flavour was achieved. This was always heralded by the sudden and magnificent appearance of masses of Red Admiral butterflies. The sight of these beautiful brown velvety creatures with their vivid red striped wings, fluttering from plum to plum; and then at last to taste the gorgeous nectarous and golden flesh of the Victorias, are among my most cherished childhood memories. I still consider that a fully ripe Victoria has the best flavour of any fruit that I have ever tasted.
In teenage years I lived in Somerset and here discovered the pleasure and the blissful freedom of cycling. I became a member of a time trial club, though I really preferred to idly tour and explore the countryside. Sometimes my friends would tire of racing across the Levels and panting up into the Mendips and we would just go for a ride around the county, at a rather more leisurely pace. This was more to my liking as I loved the Somerset villages, the little old farms and ancient barns, looking as though clothed with red Bridgewater pan tiles. Every farm seemed to nestle in its own little orchard.
Sometimes tall and knarled, the apple trees looked as old as the buildings that they surrounded. It was a wonderful sight at blossom time and a great pleasure to ride through the villages and along the lanes where the apple blossom abounded. We often made stops for refreshment at village shops and cafes. In the heat of summer this became necessary as well as enjoyable. One hot summer's day, fancying a longer drink than a cup of tea or coffee, we dared ourselves to stop at a pub, none of us being over the age of 18! This was a tiny place and although in the village of Churchill, it was perched on a small hill, well out of the way of prying eyes and accessed by a little road that went nowhere else. The Crown was every bit a traditional West Country village pub. It was charming yet most basic. Devoid of colour within, nothing jarred against the solidity of its wooden tables and bench seats that were matched by an equally solid looking row of wooden barrels behind the wooden bar counter. Two old men sat at one of the tables behind their tall straight glasses of cider. One of them had a noticeably red nose that was also unfortunately bulbous. I remember wondering if the ruddiness of it was a side effect of his cider drinking! A few words passed between them and they smiled knowingly. Our discomfort lessened when we noticed the French doors leading to the garden at the rear. Feigning nonchalance, we sidled off with our drinks and were grateful to be able to sit outside in the bright light and the warmth of the day.
I remember it all so well, even though more than half a century ago, for it was as notable as a second baptism. I had come from an abstemious family and had had no opportunity to drink alcohol before. This, my first 'proper' drink, was a glass of farmhouse cider! I tried hard not to look shocked at the first sip, for it was a fairly rough scrumpy. I did not want to lose face amongst my friends who were quaffing theirs as though they had been drinking it for years, though they almost certainly hadn't. Then after some heroic persistence, at about half way down the glass, the taste seemed to improve! I also found that the cycling friends had started to become the very, very best of friends. Such is the power of cider! It is also a very fine drink on a summer's day.
Taken in moderation it cements friendship and creates an inner glow of contentment. It was a revelation that the humble apple could be such of source of pleasure! The apple in a home made apple pie, lovely though it may be, is as though of another world. The discovery of cider was forever destined to be a special day for me. It became my first love amongst alcoholic drinks and I became dedicated to the search for better made and tastier ciders as my taste became more discerning. I enjoy a real ale now and then and I particularly like red wine, but I always come back to cider. Back to discovering the real full juice version in its many forms, made by craftsmen (and craftswomen!) in the traditional way. Cider is so very redolent of our English West Country heritage. It would be a tragedy if the farmhouse tradition of its manufacture were to die out. It is also, in my opinion, the happiest of drinks! I've long enjoyed its good nature. It rarely produces any ill effects. I've also found that those who enjoy it and especially those who make it, are some of the nicest and the kindest folk you could hope to meet. Maybe the happiness induced by drinking cider has a lingering, long term effect and it therefore keeps people in a kindly frame of mind. I like to think so.
Coming to Dorset
It is now more than thirty years ago, that I came to live in Dorset and took employment with an electronics company in Dorchester. I had expected to find an old farm cider tradition similar to that of Somerset, for all that I had read certainly suggested it was so. It was sad to find that the tradition had all but disappeared in Dorset.
The demise had begun once cider was no longer used as payment for farm workers. I became aware of a long period of attrition, stretching back to the first world war. There were once a good number of cider orchards in the county but only a few small producers managed to keep going into the latter part of the last century. I only found one of these still operating, but was disappointed to find that the cider was of the rough scrumpy variety. The cider available in the shops was factory made and equally unappealing. Though smooth, it was a bland, sweetened and homogenised product, where all brands tasted the same. I longed for the real honest flavour of well made traditional dry cider and decided that I might just as well see if I could make some of my own. Perhaps I could even help to rekindle the tradition in my own county.
Apprenticeship
I bought a little Hungarian barrel press complete with its piggyback apple mill. This came from Alex Hill of Vigo Ltd., who in those days was running his business as well as his cider making hobby from his Devon farm. I treated myself to this enticing little DIY cider kit for my birthday, though I don't remember which one. I do though remember the excitement of going to get it. Unusually, my May birthday was like a hot summer's day that year. I left the hood of my Suzuki jeep at home and drove joyfully to Devon, open topped. On my return I felt so pleased with myself, with two bottles of Alex's cider under the seat and my much prized new equipment lashed in the rear, for all to see. 'Look at me everybody, I'm going to make some cider!’
Oh the foolish optimism of it! It is all very well to have the equipment, but the main essential is a source of apples and I did not have any of my own at all. I had my eyes on David's trees next door. He had two very tall and ancient apple trees in the garden behind his cottage. The apples on them were numerous but small and yellowish green. They tasted awful and could never have been nice for eating. We entertained the hopeful idea that perhaps they had been planted by the old village folk for making cider. David bagged them up and brought them round to our garage. We then had a lot of fun juicing them with the barrel press, taking it in turns to grind the apples into pulp using the laborious little mill. A few months later it was apparent that we were never going to make a good cider with the 'old cottager's' apples, what ever their original purpose may have been. The cider was thin and very sharp and may as well have been made from Bramleys. The next year I was delighted to be told by Keith, a friend where I worked, that he had three cider trees in his garden. He too lived in an old property in a nearby village. He said that the apples were big and stripey, fairly pleasant to eat, cooked well and he had been told by someone 'in the know' that they were Tom Putts. I became excited on finding that Tom Putts were indeed the mythical cottager's apple. Having been discovered at Trent, near Sherborne, by the Reverend Tom, they had become the apple of choice for planting in cottage gardens, being of threefold usefulness, eating, cooking and for making cider!
I found that the Tom Putt cider, though fairly sharp, was a palatable and refreshing drink that could stand alone, or be most pleasant to drink with a meal. Keith dutifully provided me several plastic barrels of the big red stripeys every year and I enjoyed turning them into cider. This happy arrangement continued for a number of years, until sadly for me, Keith and his family with whom we had become great friends, moved to North Devon. I now had to look around and search the local papers for cider apples for sale in order to keep my hobby going each year. This had the welcome effect of introducing me to the more mainstream cider apples, particularly the bittersweet's like Dabinett and Yarlington Mill. I also planted a Somerset Redstreak tree in our garden for no other reason than it being a well known cider variety and the beauty of its apples. I knew nothing of the characteristics of its juice. I was beginning to experiment with blending as well as trying each variety that I came across, to see what sort of cider it would make on its own. My apprenticeship was now on a firm footing and my interest steadily increased.
‘The Good Life’
The outdoor life had always had great appeal for me. Whether this was due to the good fortune of having been brought up in a rural community, or to the genetic influence from farming on my mother's side of the family, I have no idea. However in the early 1980s, not long after moving to the village where I now live, I happened to pick up a copy of John Seymour's book of Self Sufficiency and read it avidly from cover to cover. It caused something in my mind to go off bang! Gardening was no longer enough for me, I wanted to do some farming! Growing food and rearing livestock would be the perfect antidote to the many hours that I had to spend in a stuffy engineering office. There was only one major problem. I had no land. The cottage we had bought had once been a small livestock farm, but previous owners had sold off all the land, save for the quarter of an acre that was now our garden. I pleaded with the owner of the field behind our place to sell me a couple of acres. Well perhaps one acre then, or even half an acre? He was always friendly towards me but steadfast in his refusal following my numerous requests over a period of four years. In the meantime my ambition just would not go away. We had been lucky that the main barn of the farm had been retained with the cottage. Its last use had been for pig rearing and contained a number of block walled pens with sloping concrete floors. There was still a narrow strip of land behind the barn, so I realised that I could at least rear a few pigs with the facilities that we already owned. I started with two Welsh weaners, bought from a like minded fellow engineer. Eventually, one we ate and one we sold, following on from the previous sales of the piglets they had produced. I then moved on to other breeds, trying Wessex Saddlebacks and Tamworths. Rather like the cider apples, it was fun to try the different varieties!
A retired couple just along the road had a one acre paddock attached to their property. They kindly let me use this land to keep a Jersey cow. I was attracted to one with a white star on her forehead that luckily I was able to buy from a herd on a farm, down at the far end of the village. We now had a 'house cow' that I milked by hand before going to work and again on my return in the evening. I felt guilty that 'Clover' could be lonely, so it was not long before I bought 'Tansy', another Jersey, to keep her company. It became difficult to keep to a regular schedule with the milking. Sometimes my work took me away from base to visit the companies of my firm's customers, and I could be quite late getting home. There was also more milk than we knew what to do with and I resented pouring the excess into the pigs trough. To see a gallon or two of milk that had just been patiently hand milked, scoffed by the pigs within minutes, got me thinking that there had to be better use of my spare time. I moved on to calf rearing. At that time, well fattened calves commanded a good price at the local cattle auction and the pleasurable enterprise of rearing them was worth the effort financially. The little herd had by then outgrown the land and I now needed to buy some pasture, even more than I did at the outset. Fortunately the farmer who owned the large 20 acre field adjoining my friend's paddock was sympathetic to my needs and agreed to sell two acres, cut as a triangle from the corner of his field. I now had my own land. Whoopee!
This was 1990 and not long after the cows had settled in their new home, I set about planting some apple trees. Soon I had a neat row of eight, two year old, standards. There were four eaters and four cider varieties to help with my 'other' hobby. I continued my planting with soft fruit, two rows of vines and a patch for vegetables. Here to prevent boredom highjacking the story, I will move on ten years to the turn of the century and summarise what transpired in the intervening period.
Moving on
I had gradually got fed up with growing vegetables because I found it to be a continual battle with the weeds and the rabbits. I found that the vines were a tremendous amount of hard work and I was not pleased with the wine that I made from them. They are now all grubbed. Most of the soft fruit has also gone, again because of the high work load required for its upkeep. I loved the cattle best of all. At one point I achieved a herd of 12 sucklers by using extra temporary grazing to supplement my own. When this land was no longer available I cut back to four that became like pets. Then followed a sad period of several years when, one by one, I lost them to bovine tuberculosis contracted from the badgers that inhabit the wide hedgerows that surround my land. I had added more fruit trees during this period, including plums and pears as well as many more cider apples. On the fateful day when Tony the vet, whom I had got to know well from his awesome 'ministry' testing visits, pronounced that my last little pet had reacted to her latest TB test, I made a big decision. No more cows, I just could not bear the sorrow of losing them again. From now on this land would be an orchard, a cider orchard! Each year since then I've added more trees. They are all standards on M25 rootstocks. This is because I love the look of a traditional orchard and also because I need to have vigorous rootstocks to compensate for the poor quality of the soil.
The orchard is now full, comprising around 150 trees at the last count. They grow very slowly in the chalky soil so it will be many years before a really useful crop of apples can be obtained. This is of no great consequence as I have several good friends with much older cider orchards who supply the bulk of my cider making needs. As I have said there are many pleasurable aspects to having an orchard.
My cider making hobby had continued steadily year by year during this period. A number of demijohns had been poured down the drain with disgust, but an increasingly larger number became a drinkable beverage. Sometimes I would even consider one or two to be really yummy! Typically these were ciders made from my own Kingston black or Stoke Red apples, hand picked at the height of their perfection. This was very encouraging. I was learning what could be done, as well as what not to do, not ever again!
Early in 2002 we had a big communal effort in our village to raise money. We decided that we wanted to put on a party for the whole village, to mark the Golden Jubilee of the Queen's Accession to the throne. We would need to hire a big marquee for the party in the afternoon that was to be followed by country dancing in the evening. Sideshows and amusements such as a magic show were also planned for the children to enjoy. In order to get enough money to pay for all of this, various events were organised and ideas sought that would bring variety, so as to keep things interesting and give momentum to the task. It occurred to me that with all the different jars of cider that I then had lurking in our utility room, we could put on a cider tasting and cheese nibbling event in our place to raise a bit of cash.
It was nice to find that it proved to be a considerable success as well as an enjoyable occasion. People were surprisingly complimentary about the ciders. It was even appreciated by those who normally did not drink cider at all. Looking back on it now, I think it was this that spurred me on to increase the amount of cider that I made year on year into commercial production and the selling of my cider to local pubs and annual events.
In 2003 I joined the on line cider forum, UKcider. Here I was able to enjoy many interesting exchanges with other craft cider makers and to learn from some of the experts in the field. Most notably I have been helped in the technical matters relating to the craft by Andrew Lea, who once carried out research at the famous cider institute at Long Ashton, near Bristol. Gary Awdey in the USA also generously shared his great accumulated wisdom with regard to keeved cider. Chris King Turner of Mahorral Cider near Ludlow also gave me some very sound advice concerning commercial aspects and came up with the suggestion for the name, 'Cider by Rosie' for my draught product. There are many others whose tips, hints, enquiries and personal experiences have kept the pot of enthusiasm boiling and helped me more than I can say. A big thank you to you all!
In 2005, Andy Roberts, the founder of UKcider asked if he could collate my own postings in order to create the Cider Making Year on the UKcider wiki. It would become like a diary of a small cider maker in Dorset. As it accumulated it would show the progression from hobby cider making, to the production of 7000 litres per year as a commercial craft cider maker. I agreed on the basis that he could use any postings that he considered would be of interest or helpful to others in the same position as myself. The diary has continued, in sporadic bursts, until the present day. It can be accessed here where you may, should you wish, pick up the continuing story of Cider by Rosie until the present. I will try to keep it updated as and when something that may be of interest arises.