The Cider Tasting
Well, the day after my last posted picture, on the Sunday, we followed up the Church Ale with the tasting of the cider. Thing is, down here in Devon, we’ve seen many of the ancient cider orchards ripped up, because the European Union thinks that there were too many in England, and so our farmers were paid to pull up all their apple trees, losing hundreds of old and irreplaceable varieties, while French and other farmers were paid equal subsidies to plant new ones. Sounds mad to you? It is.
Still, down here we have some old orchards still knocking about. And the people who have too many apples need to do something with them all. Only one decent thing to do, naturally.
So once a year everyone brings their windfalls and spares to a special location, and we crush them all before shoving them all through a press. The resultant juice is left in barrels – nothing added, not sugar, not yeast – until we judge the time to be right. And then the cider is checked. That’s what we were doing on Sunday.
It’s a miserable life here in the country. Honest.