How we make our cider.
In some ways we have had a head start when it comes to cider making. Our orchards are around thirty years old and we grow a wide variety of cider apples. We sell cider apples to some of the world's biggest cider makers so when it comes to selecting the principal ingredient for our cider we know our stuff.
At present we have been using a blend of Vilberie and Brown Snout apples to make our flagship medium dry 'red label' cider. A single variety, Browns, are used to make our slightly sweeter offering, our medium 'green label' cider. Finally, our limited release 'Yarlington Mill' cider is made with (you guessed it!) Yarlington Mill apples to produce a complex cider with a taste somewhere between sweet and dry.
Our apples are brought in from the orchard and washed here in our yard. The apples are juiced by us using our own mobile press. (Please contact us if you have a quantity of apples you would like to have juiced.)
The juice is stored in 1000 litre vats and following the addition of malic acid (to add acidity) and yeast (to turn the natural sugar to alcohol), the fermentation process begins. A satisfying gurgle will soon emerge from each vat to tell us that nature is taking its course. We take our time over fermentation and we do not allow commercial pressure to rush this vital phase. To aid purity we also rack off our cider twice before it is finally ready for the next stage. When our head tasters decide that it is ready we send our cider off to be bottled and labelled locally, and returned to us ready for all our customers. - see list of stockists.