Tag: Herefordshire

Why you should raise a glass to English Wine Week in Herefordshire

I’m inspecting neat, newly flowering rows on a sun-dappled day in the English countryside.

But I’m not strolling in the gardens of a stately home. Instead, I’ve come to a vineyard in the rural heartland of Herefordshire to witness an unlikely trend: the rise of quality English wines.

No, really. The patchwork-quilt landscape, best known for its autumn cider harvest, is now home to a group of wineries helping to fuel the boom in English wine tourism.

Who would have thought that our home-grown vino could have gone from quirky curiosity to award winner?

But the start of English Wine Week (June 18) is set to confirm the trend with 195 wineries, producing 9m bottles of English wine per year, according to 2021 figures from Wines of Great Britain.

Furthermore, wine tourism increased by 57% in 2020, reflecting a boom in domestic visits to wineries and sales direct from the cellar door.

 “The growth reflects the way climate change has enabled some grape varieties to flourish in new parts of England, but also a better understanding generally of techniques,” explains Julia Trustram Eve, Head of Marketing at Wines of Great Britain.

“Sparkling wines (64% of the market) still dominate but confidence is growing in still wines — especially linked to food pairing.”

Award winner

The coming of age of English wine means places like the Wye Valley in the Welsh Marches come become our answer to the Route des Grands Crus in Burgundy. Jamie McIntyre, the owner of the Wythall Estate Vineyard, is poised, corkscrew in hand.

“The Wye Valley is the perfect showcase for English wines, driving through the countryside in an open-top car and stopping off at wineries,” he says.

Wythall’s vineyard, set in the grounds of the 16th-century family estate, is just two miles outside the historic market town of Ross-on-Wye. It grows four varieties, based on German stock, across its four acres, producing around 4,000 bottles per year.

The Fruhburgunder grape produces Wythall’s Pinot Noir (£30 per bottle), which won Gold at the Independent English Wine Awards 2022.

Wild rabbits scamper through the vines and fallow deer emerge gingerly into the sunlight in the fields beyond as Jamie takes me on a tour of the vineyard.

He tells me afterwards, as we taste the wines in the wood-paneled dining room, the glasses embossed with the family crest that dates from the 1500s:

“The snobbery around English wine has gone. It’s no longer a blind spot for wine drinkers.”

Jamie’s wines are served alongside pints of local Butty Bach at The Hostelrie gastropub in the nearby village of Goodrich, close to medieval Goodrich Castle.

I match a dinner of monkfish and chorizo, followed by a plum compote with cold custard, with a glass of Jamie’s Sparkling Rose in the garden on a sun-kissed summer evening.

New varieties

The next day, I visit the Coddington Vineyard [pictured above], which along with Wythall and Frome Valley Vineyards, features in a series of new, self-guided wine walks of Herefordshire.

I follow an undulating five-mile route from the Church of St James, located in the village of Colwall, then cross Coddington’s vineyard for lunch before climbing Oyster Hill, the Malvern Hills and the town of Ledbury on the horizon.

Coddington is one of the more mature wineries in the region with three varieties, including two still whites and a sparkling Pinot Gris.

“You only get good wine from good grapes,” explains owner Peter Maiden, showing off his neatly pruned rows of Ortega, grapes derived from German Riesling stock.

“There’s a lot of coordination between sugars and acid.”

 The vines start to bud in May and will be in full flower for English Wine Week with harvest time bringing a frenzy of activity to the tranquil rural site come October.

“It’s a labour of love but very satisfying,” says co-owner Sharon Maiden.

“Given longer summers and milder winters, our wines increasingly benefit from a fruity, floral flavour that make them uniquely English.”

I agree, and having stocked up at the cellar door, I’ll be embracing home-grown wines from now on.

After all, how better to celebrate The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend than raising a glass of new-generation English wine.

How to get a taste for autumn on a cider-tasting trip to Herefordshire

James Marsden is keen to introduce me to Big Mama.

She stands tall in the middle of a restored orchard, looking good for her 300 years, with her mother-tree branches heaving under the bounty of late-harvest perry pears.

I’ve joined James to gather the harvest by hand in Gregg’s Pit orchard, located near Ledbury.

The harvest [pictured above] starts in late September and, depending on the weather, lasts four to six weeks.

Herefordshire is the historical centre of Britain’s cider-making industry — and is in rude health given the renaissance of cider as a premium, organic product.

UK cider represents 45 per cent of the global cider market with orchards generating over £33m annually, according to The National Association of Cider Makers (NACM).

‘It’s labour-intensive work,’ says James, ‘but I work with nature, using the sun to influence the sugars.’

Historic connections 

Cider has been produced in Herefordshire since the medieval period with references to ‘sidir’, meaning ‘a strong drink’ found in the 1420 Wycliff Bible at Hereford Cathedral.

As cider challenged wine in fashionable circles during the 17th century, most Herefordshire farmhouses installed grindstones to press the Herefordshire Redstreak apples popularised by the area’s cider pioneer, Lord Scudamore.

Today the region remains the largest cider-producing county in the UK with around 20,000 acres under orchard, growing high-quality cider apples and perry pears.

I set out on an autumnal morning, the countryside dappled with spotlight sunbeams and bursting with ripe fruit, to explore the southern Redstreak Cider Circuit, a self-guided tour of the region’s apple-harvest heritage between Ledbury and Ross-on-Wye.

There’s also a Newton Wonder trail, a northern loop around Hereford, with both 45-mile circuits making for a gentle weekend exploring by bike or car.

The southern circuit pivots around the village of Much Marcle, with its 14th-century church dedicated to Saint Bartholomew.

It’s also home to both Gregg’s Pit and Westons Cider, the latter selling brands like Stowford Press and exporting to 40 countries.

Westons is the new face of the cider business: modern, large-scale and based around a visitor centre with a family restaurant.

I join the tour, poking my head into the distillery where huge wooden vats groan under the weight of fermenting fruit, and the visitors’ centre, which explains the history of British cider through historic cider bottles and labels.

Country roads

I later drive on along the country B-roads, the circuit leading me through villages made up of black-and-white buildings.

Many of the cider and perry producers on the circuit welcome visitors for orchard tours followed by an al-fresco or farm-barn tasting. Local cafes, restaurants and hotels, meanwhile, offer apple-themed menus throughout the harvest season.

Orchards have been part of Herefordshire’s landscape throughout history but while some producers have scaled up for the mass market, there are plenty of small-scale operators rediscovering the region’s organic cider-making origins.

Back at nearby Gregg’s Pit, I find James on his hands and knees, collecting pears with a headtorch as the light fades.

He makes a small volume of single-variety and blended ciders and perry drinks each year, using pure fruit juice and traditional methods, including a stone press in his garden.

When I pop my head around the door of the Vat House, the heady waft means the fermentation process is in full swing.

James, who is fond of cooking up an autumnal bean stew using Toulouse sausages and cider:

‘I’m trying to create a complex, distinctive drink and see it primarily as a food-pairing product.’

‘Herefordshire feels deep rural and that’s why I’ve made it my home,’ he adds as we sit in the back garden, the sun setting over the fields overlooking May Hill and the Cotswolds, with a glass of méthode champenoise bottle-fermented perry.

Cheers.

* This story first appeared in the Daily Mail.

How to spend a weekend on the Herefordshire Cider Circuit

National Apple Day had cider fans celebrating this week.

I joined in the spirit of the autumnal event with a short UK break in Herefordshire, following a newly launched Cider Circuit [pictured above] of orchards and producers.

It was great to be on assignment and having a change of scene in a safe, socially distanced way before new lockdowns loom.

Here’s a flavour of the feature:

Cider has been part of Herefordshire’s rural heritage since medieval times with local cider first exported to London in the 17th century as a fashionable alternative to wine.

In recent years, the cider market has been dominated by big brands, mass production and the rise of fruit-flavoured ciders

But a new generation of cider makers is now taking over, moving away from the cloudy-scrumpy-and-sandals image in favour of a premium product.

Read the full article in the i newspaper here.

Story of the week: Autumn apple harvest in Herefordshire

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* Harvest festival season is in full swing – we even went to the apple festival at our local National Trust property last weekend. To keep the theme, here’s an old story from the archives about a cider-drinking trip to Herefordshire.

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Tom Oliver really knows his apples.

From Redstreak to Brown Snout via Yarlington Mill, there are over 350 varieties of cider fruit in Herefordshire and, as an award-winning cidermaker, Tom has crafted the amber nectar from many of them.

“I remember my first taste of cider. I was about eight years old and sitting some atop some bales of hay,” grins Tom as I join him in the tasting room of Oliver’s Perry & Cider House, a tiny, rustic cellar lined with glass bottles of cider, for a quick lesson in the fine art of cider blending.

“My grandfather’s farmhands were handing round a cup of cider after unloading the apples at the end of the day — I was instantly hooked.”

Oliver’s started making cider commercially in 1999, eschewing farming hops for apples, and today produces some 30,000 bottles per year from five acres of orchards.

I follow Tom into a dark, damp barn behind the tasting room, where six barrels of Dabinett cider are slowly fermenting. The aim of today’s blending session, Tom explains, is to produce 1,000l of single-variety cider by blending different barrels to make for a softer, more rounded taste.

“I’m looking for something with an essence of honesty. What I don’t want is something mass produced,” says Tom, getting to work with a highly scientific turkey baster and a clipboard.

“Anyone can make an exceptional cider or perry -– they just need the will to do it.”

Long history

Cider has been produced in Herefordshire since Roman times with the combination of climate and mineral-rich, sandstone earth perfect for growing high-quality cider apples and perry pears.

In the 14th century, local children were christened in cider; by the 19th-century heyday over 3m gallons of cider were produced each year and, as late as the early 20th century, local farm workers were still partly paid in cider for a day’s labour.

Today, thanks to an upsurge of interest in organic produce and a slick TV advertising campaign by Magners to popularise cider as a summer drink over ice, cider is suddenly back in fashion.

Every autumn, Herefordshire, the largest cider-producing county in the UK with 9,500 hectares under orchard, comes alive with the apple harvest.

As the dappled shades of autumn reflect across the gently undulating hills of the countryside, apples are gathered for the three-stage cider-making process of milling (crushing), pressing and fermenting.

My base to explore the region was The New Inn, a 16th-century coaching inn, located down winding country B-roads in a village outside the attractive town of Hereford.

From here I set out on an autumnal morning to follow the official Herefordshire Cider Trail, a route signposted via a series of brown signs and accompanied by a glossy map.

The 70-mile trail starts with historical displays and artefacts at the Cider Museum in Hereford, and continues around a dozen or so local producers forming a triangle between Hereford, Leominster and Ledbury.

It makes for a relaxing drive with autumn leaves adding a splash of colour to the roadside and plenty of small villages, local cafes and country pubs to explore en route.

Cider trail

As I follow the trail, I find the attractions range widely. One visit is a low-key affair whereby I join an ad-hoc tasting session hosted by a grizzled local farmer in a ramshackle farm outbuilding.

Another visit brings me to Westons Cider, Herefordshire’s second biggest cider producer after Bulmers, which sells premium brands like Stowford Press and Vintage Reserve and exports to 23 countries, notably cider-crazy Finland.

The sprawling complex is the new face of cider: modern, slick and very family friendly.

After a quick tour around the site, poking my head into the distillery where huge wooden vats groan under the weight or fermenting cider, and the visitors’ centre, which tells the history of British cider drinking through rare and historic cider bottles and labels, I head for the award-winning restaurant, The Scrumpy House.

Set in a converted hay barn, the food is, I decide while tucking into roast park with apple sauce, excellent — hearty but unfussy. The chef even cleverly incorporates cider into his recipes.

Later that day, in the village of Bodenham, I find cider maker Martin Harris of Butford Organics, converting the farm’s ruined old cider mill into a modern new visitor centre.

Martin downshifted from being a partner in a firm of actuaries in Leeds and is typical of the new breed of cidermaker I find along the trail. Instead of ruddy-faced yokels swilling cloudy scrumpy, contemporary producers are dedicated master craftsmen and have more in common with French winemakers.

They are more concerned with blending and terroir than chewing straw and barn dances.

“I’m combining traditional skills and with more scientific knowledge,” says Martin, as we sip tea in his farmhouse kitchen, warmed by the glow of the Aga in the corner.

“It’s an intellectual and a physical challenge to produce great cider.”

Back at Oliver’s Perry & Cider House, Tom and I have spent the afternoon discussing tannins and exalting the elderflower on the nose of a lemony-citrus perry like a couple of champagne experts in Rheims.

We’ve agreed on the final blend of Dabinett and I’ve learnt that a medium-dry perry matches well with pork, a dry cider makes the perfect accompaniment to Camembert and sweet perry can be served as the perfect pre-diner aperitif.

“The mark of a good cider is that it’s palatable at first but that it also has enough body to take you on a journey,” says Tom, pouring the final blend triumphantly into a plastic pint glass.

The rain may be cascading down outside the barn but Tom and I are grinning contentedly as we savour our Dabinett blend.

After a weekend following the Cider Trail, I’ve learnt how cider making has all the subtlety of winemaking but none of the pretensions.

And, as the eight-per-cent alcohol kicks in, I discover one final secret of expert cider tasting:

Real cider men don’t spit.

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* This story first appeared in the Daily Express in 2007. Liked this? Try Raising a glass to British Food Fortnight in Cumbria.

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