Observe Somerset’s Cider Path for England’s Greatest Pours

“It was buried here in the barn, found under a load of rubble.” I’m standing at a 150-year-old apple press with farm proprietor Sophie Brendel ­— tall, linen-clad, with a basket of backyard veggies on her arm — as she reveals me the now-renovated oak construction, which resembles a loom or punitive medieval system. “Come late November, locals and friends help with the pressing,” she says. “We share cider, cook food. Exactly as it was for so many generations of farmers here.”

I’m at Thornfalcon Winery & Press, a cluster of lavender-fringed stone farmhouses whose orchards and vineyards are shielded by the encircling mounds of the Quantock, Blackdown and Mendip hills. Here in Somerset, the religious heartland of English cider, manufacturing is assumed up to now again to pre-Roman occasions. The county consumes and produces a number of the UK’s highest portions of the traditional beverage. It’s residence to heritage apple bushes and family names like Thatchers, Perry’s and Sheppy’s — and, in recent times, has seen a increase in new artisan producers like Thornfalcon.

“I didn’t want to just muddle through lockdown and go back to what I was doing before,” says Panu Long, Sophie’s equally tall, farm-tanned husband, who spent a long time within the London drinks trade, heading up bars just like the Met. So, the couple began planning for an orchard and winery, shifting right here in 2022. Cider manufacturing began a 12 months later.

Panu gives me a style of Thornfalcon’s dry, naturally glowing cider. It’s savoury, but apple-rich — nearly like a champagne or pét nat (naturally effervescent wine). “Like wine, cider flavour varies each year,” he says. “Last year was hot, producing lots of sweet apples.”

Thornfalcon additionally makes a hay-coloured juice — tangy, candied-apple candy — that takes me again to childhood summers. But most of its apples are blended after which fermented for cider, a year-long course of completed within the bottle for pure carbonation and rounded flavours. Their candy cider is Panu’s satisfaction: a honeyed golden-amber marvel made by ‘keeving’, a fancy course of involving temperature management and siphoning that starves the yeast, leaving sugars behind. “It’s a lot trickier than anything we do with our wine,” Panu says of the tactic that sprung up within the 1600s throughout northern France and southwestern England.

In the orchards, we discover Kingston Blacks, Stembridge Clusters and Porter’s Perfection. “Old, noble varieties that produce fantastic cider apples,” Sophie says. Nature leads at this tranquil 40-acre farm, the place little however the sound of skylarks fills the air. The lake has a woodfired sauna and household of swans, and the rewilded fields are residence to a few immaculately appointed huts for in a single day stays overlooking orchards and vineyards. “We get our first grape harvest this autumn,” she says. “From vines planted three years ago.” The property already produces rosé and a biscuity glowing from native grapes. “By September, we’ll do tastings and supper clubs here,” Sophie provides, beaming, as we go a superbly buttressed Sixteenth-century barn, mid-conversion. “A sort of magic happens when you take what this wonderful land produces and bring a creative process to it.”

Scrumpy Star

Weaving 45 minutes north leads me to the hilltop hamlet of Mudgley. It’s 10.30am on a Sunday and the corrugated roof of Wilkins Cider Farm is already snap-crackling within the solar. Roger Wilkins is shouldering sacks of spuds onto trestle tables sagging beneath hefty jars of pickled eggs and bricks of extra-mature cheddar.

“All local. You won’t get those in the supermarket,” says the wiry 78-year-old. Old pub tables spill into the yard; sensible {couples} sip cider within the sunshine; locals sink pints, fortified by strong packed lunches of roast rooster.

Roger is the definition of ruddy, the flush from his apple-red cheeks extending to his slicked gray hair. He welcomes visitors seven days every week — thirsty work that requires some 16 pints of his scrumpy-style farmhouse cider a day, he tells me. “I haven’t had a hangover or took aspirin since I were 20,” he says. Roger’s grandfather based the farm in 1917. Its stone barns rake down an orchard-fringed slope, unchanged for 5 generations — very similar to the cider.

“We don’t add nothing,” Roger stresses. “Not like factory-made stuff: 65% water and six teaspoons of sugar. I call it Lucozade.”

A 100-tonne picket press resembling medieval gallows towers to the roof. Each autumn, a mix of cider apples — the likes of Kingston Blacks and Brown Snout, grown right here in orchards for hundreds of years — are crushed and pressed, the juice transferred to wooden barrels to ferment naturally. “I don’t test. I do everything by smell and taste,” he says. “And I leave it a minimum six months, up to nine. All factory ciders add fast-acting yeast, so it’s ready in a week. But you can’t get body and flavour in days.”

A trio of hulking 118-gallon barrels supply ‘dry’ or ‘sweet’, straight from a faucet. Dry — the preferred — has a traditional scrumpy, farmyard nostril, touchdown an astringent tang on the tongue; the opposite is bittersweet with a cool apple end. Both are hazy, amber and refreshingly cool. “If you want medium, it’s ‘arf-an-arf’,” says Roger, swilling half dry, half candy right into a jam jar. This, I conclude, is my choice, although I cease wanting shopping for a 10-litre jerry can.

It’s rustic stuff, however Wilkins Cider Farm — a stone’s throw from Glastonbury — attracts a starry crowd, from Johnny Rotten to Mick Jagger. “Lily Allen used to come in with her dad,” he says. “She rang me wanting 40 gallons for her wedding.” We’re ignored by a mural of Roger, attributed to Banksy, who’s stated to personal a pub in close by Pilton. “But this is my favourite,” says Roger, displaying a press clipping interview with Joe Strummer, late Clash frontman and one-time common. “Joe said that chilling in Somerset with a flagon of Wilkins’ Farmhouse Cider was his little bit of heaven.”

Magician’s Flourish

An hour’s drive away, I discover a magic trick in a bottle at The Newt in Somerset. “It’s subtle, right?” says cellar hand Max Warman. “If we tasted blind, you’d assume it’s a vinho verde.” We’re sampling The Newt’s Wyvern Wing Cyder within the modern distillery that greets visitors on the entrance gate, overlooking an 18th-century walled parabola trellised with 300 apple varieties.

The Newt, which can be a lodge, started manufacturing in 2018, a 12 months earlier than it welcomed guests to its 3,000 acres of woodland, farmland and gardens strung between the cities of Bruton and Castle Cary. Its 65 acres of orchards produce 70 apple varieties, many innovatively processed utilizing fashionable winemaking with conventional cider-pressing methods. Crisp and zesty with a touch of apple, Wyvern Wing is a wine by every other identify. “If I have cider with a meal, it’s this,” Max continues. “From a wine glass, to release the aromatics.”

Wyvern Wing is one in every of The Newt’s household of small-batch ciders (or cyders — the previous spelling reflecting the property’s Georgian origins), made utilizing cold-fermentation cellar strategies. In the case of Wyvern Wing, pinot grigio yeast is added, whereas méthode champenoise creates the champagne-style Winston. “We take inspiration from Babylonstoren,” says Max, of The Newt’s South African sister vineyard.

Unusually, Wyvern Wing is made with Braeburn apples. “Eaters can create interesting ciders,” explains Max. Most, although, use cider apples, that are tarter, with thicker skins — like Yarlington Mill Cyder, made with the titular selection found a stone’s throw from right here within the 1800s. It’s a gently fizzy tipple, cider-tannic, with a toffee end. But the Ice Cyder is the ultimate magician’s flourish: made by freezing apple juice, it’s a useless ringer for the Canadian ice wines it’s impressed by. “And,” says Max, “it’s surprisingly good with prosecco, as a spritz.”

Top Somerset Food Experiences

The Newt in Somerset

Dine on foraged meals, cured fish and estate-reared meat at The Botanical Rooms within the Georgian manor home, or strive veggie-forward lunches — fennel soup, spiced roasted cauliflower — at its hillside Garden Café, with sweeping property views.

Frome Farmers’ Market

Cheese is the proper cider pairing. This east Somerset city market sells brie-style Bath Soft Cheese, naturally rinded choices from Somerset Cheese Company and Godminster’s cracking natural classic cheddar. It’s held on the second Saturday of the month.

Osip

Farm-to-table tasting menus at this Michelin-starred restaurant-with-rooms, in a former pub on the outskirts of Bruton, may embrace lovage broth, fermented potato brioche, black pig with grilled nettles, sorrel sorbet with rhubarb. Plus: house-made ciders.