Hampshire Heritage, as ever, is a pleasure to work on. Yields are slightly up and as usual the balance has been struck 50/50 between dessert and cider fruit. If ever there was a year that this was in danger, it was last year. However, it is testament to the care and love that Fruitwise give to their orchard that both the sugar content (potential alcohol) and quality has been brilliant. A touch less alcohol than last year (will come in under 7%) but the number of varieties pressed remains roughly the same – Hill Farm may have contributed a few Egremont Russets to make up for the lack of Fruitwise russets last year, but needs must.
Eastern Delight has taken off as the Hill Farm cider now. Last year, it had quite a lot of Fruitwise dessert apples in it, which added a huge amount of character. However, if its going to expand then it needs to stand on its own. Yield and sugars in Hill Farm apples have been fantastic again, and I am expecting ED to remain just over 7%. However, the Cox had a year off, so it’s a lot of Egremont and some Royal Gala. To compensate for the acidity, there is about 5% cider fruit in the blend.
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| Wild West, in a Rotoplas |
The troublesome cider this year has been, once again, Wild West. The normal orchard, Strongs, had a near total failure of crop last year, so I used a neighbouring orchard, Rogers. Sadly, I was left a ton short at the end, so there is slightly less juice than I had planned. Also the apples were VERY grubby and I ended up throwing quite a lot away (more than I would call reasonable, to be fair). Add to this poor sugar levels and I think you will understand why the blend had to be 80/20 cider fruit to dessert (acid). Not only did I need to protect the juice with extra acid, but I needed to get the sugar level to above 1045. My lesson for this cider is to secure a proper contract for fruit with some kind of incentive to supply a reasonable quality of fruit!
As for specials and competition ciders, well, there are five of them in total. Four are competition blends of specific Fruitwise apples and there is about 30 litres of each. These will be released as (very) limited bottles at some point – unless I drink it all:-) The last is a single variety Egremont Russet cider which was produced by both myself and my 9 year old daughter, Cariad. Cariad lives with a form of muscular dystrophy, Spinal Muscular Atrophy (which you can Google all you like but I won’t go into any more detail than that as she is learning how to use the internet!) Each year she insists on making something to sell so that she can raise spending money for our annual pilgrimage to Disneyland Paris. Last year it was jam and chutney. This year she figured she could make more by making cider. So a bin of Hill Farm Egremont Russet was selected (by her) and we made 220 litres. She will be designing the label and all proceeds from it will go into her piggybank for Disneyland.
Well, charities have done a lot for her in the past and she has a very independent mind!
What else?. Watch out for a new ‘medium’ blend this year… and a renaming of the ‘medium-dry’ Wild West. Many people have suggested that the all dry line up ought to include a sweeter cider, so these should redress that imbalance (though I like dry ciders, so it took some getting used to!)
The new medium cider will be a blend of 50/50 Eastern Delight and Wild West, and be available in bottles as well as bag in box. It doesn’t have a name yet – its still in testing currently from the very last of last years batches.
Wild West (medium dry) will be known as Mild West from 2013. I know it is very sad, but I giggled a lot when it was suggested to me!
So, there will be 146 ciders in 2013. About 6,500 litres give or take. Lets just hope I can make it 4 years in a row of winning something – and that I don’t end up throwing the Wild West down the drain!
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