\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you love cider, this is cider to the power of 10,\u201d says Barny Butterfield, speaking about the flavours packed by some of this year\u2019s \u201cspecial\u201d apples.<\/p>\n
Indeed Butterfield, the owner of Sandford Orchards, near Exeter, is buying extra tanks to increase cider production after the UK\u2019s hottest summer on record resulted in an abundance of fruit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think God\u2019s a cider maker,\u201d he joked. To thrive, fruit trees need heat and light and this year \u201cwe had lots of both\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had boughs breaking on trees under the weight of fruit,\u201d Butterfield continued. \u201cIt\u2019s probably going to be the best vintage since 2018.\u201d<\/p>\n
With more than 20 years in the business, he declared: \u201cIt might even be the best in my cider-making lifetime. We\u2019re looking at an incredibly special year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The National Association of Cider Makers (NACM) says the warm spring and summer have produced apples \u201cfull of rich flavours and natural sweetness\u201d, despite the fact that the reduced rainfall means the fruit is slightly smaller than average.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve heard from cider makers and growers that the sugar and tannin levels are very high, which means the quality of the fruit will be outstanding,\u201d said the NACM chair, David Sheppy, who is also the managing director of Sheppy\u2019s Cider. \u201cIt is going to be a good year for quality.\u201d<\/p>\n
The record-breaking summer temperatures this year that contributed to the abundance of apples was made about 70 times more likely because of human-induced climate change, the Met Office concluded in an analysis published earlier this month. The mean temperature across June, July and August was 16.1C (70F), significantly above the current record of 15.8C set in 2018, with the country also seeing four heatwaves across a single season.<\/p>\n
<\/span>A bottle of Sheppy\u2019s Kingston Black Somerset Cider.<\/span> Photograph: urbanbuzz\/Alamy<\/p>\n Sheppy, whose family has 36 hectares (90 acres) of orchards in Somerset, said the trees had \u201csuffered a little bit\u201d. Mature trees \u201cdon\u2019t mind a dry spell\u201d, he said, but the stress of the dry weather meant he had observed a small number that had split and lost their branches.<\/p>\n Cider-producers have moved to make the most of this year\u2019s bumper crop. Sandford Orchards, which makes Devon Red cider, has installed eight new 50,000-litre (11,000-gallon) tanks and Butterfield is particularly excited to have lots of Tremlett\u2019s Bitter apples, meaning Sandford Orchards can bottle a single variety for the first time in seven years.<\/p>\n He describes their \u201cleathery and marmaladey\u201d notes and \u201crich natural sweetness\u201d.<\/p>\n There is also good news for perry drinkers after last year\u2019s disaster. Albert Johnson, director of Ross-on-Wye Cider & Perry Company bills it as a \u201cbounceback year\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cLast year was so bad for perry pears, probably over half the crop was wiped out by the bad conditions in the growing season,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n <\/span>This harvest is a bumper harvest, say cider makers.<\/span> Photograph: Neil Phillips\/Alamy<\/p>\n It is a different story this year. \u201cIf anything, the pear sugars are up even more than the apples, and there\u2019s plenty of them. So it\u2019s a really exciting year for perry.\u201d<\/p>\n Industry figures show that while UK cider sales edged up slightly to \u00a33.1bn in 2024, the overall amount drunk declined by about 3% to 676m litres. Sheppy, the sixth generation of his family to work in cider-making, said the industry \u201chad been in decline, but it\u2019s picking up again\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s coming back,\u201d he said of the sector, which supports about 65,000 jobs. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of innovation and new ideas, both around reducing alcohol content but also at the higher end \u2026 to appeal to the modern drinker.<\/p>\n \u201cLike a lot of industries, cider goes through phases. But there\u2019s a strong passion for the industry in this country. It\u2019s a close connection with the land and farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n Sheppy\u2019s harvest started at the end of last week. \u201cWe grow 40 different varieties of apples,\u201d he said. \u201cThe earliest ones are ripening now but the main cider apple varieties, like Dabinett, Harry Masters and Yarlington Mill, are ready mid- to late October, early November. That\u2019s the key time.\u201d<\/p>\n But even if this year is one to remember, Sheppy is keen to point out that the industry doesn\u2019t have \u201cbad years\u201d, only \u201cbad harvests\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like when you get a wetter harvest, the quality is not as good, because that\u2019s all in the blending process. We can blend a good year with a bad year and maintain the quality, that is part of the art of being a cider maker.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIf you love cider, this is cider to the power of 10,\u201d says Barny Butterfield, speaking about the flavours packed by some of this year\u2019s \u201cspecial\u201d apples. Indeed Butterfield, the owner of Sandford Orchards, near Exeter, is buying extra tanks to increase cider production after the UK\u2019s hottest summer on record resulted in an abundance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[3198,13057,13056,4470,11238,1725,10194,1545,3015,1664],"class_list":{"0":"post-21270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-bumper","10":"tag-cider","11":"tag-drink","12":"tag-drooling","13":"tag-food","14":"tag-harvest","15":"tag-industry","16":"tag-makers","17":"tag-power"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}