A year of contrasts

16 June 2020   in Apples, Cider, Orchard by Admin

...

It’s been a while since the last blog post, and a lot has happened; some good, some not so good (to say the least…). The 2019 harvest was surprisingly good, coming after a bumper crop in 2018.

Some of the cider apples (Tremlett’s Bitter and most of the Dabinett) took the year off, but others produced well. We had a busy time with some new outlets as well as attending events, such as Beetham Nurseries‘ excellent “Apple and Fruit Weekend”. The newly-released 2017/2018 ciders were very promising – lots of flavour and well-balanced (see the range on the ciders page). The apple juices were proving very popular too.

Over the winter, we grafted a couple of “Balls Bittersweet” trees from a local source, having tasted and analysed the apples, deciding that they should be well-suited to our orchard and should yield an excellent cider (a few years down the track…). The spring was shaping up nicely, then (you know the rest…). The orchard, of course, carries on regardless and we had a beautiful show of blossom (just unable to share it with anyone) – see the picture of the Tremlett’s Bitter which promises a massive crop again this year after taking 2019 off. Pretty much all our cider outlets had to close, but Lorton Village Shop has been very busy and has stocked the Apple juice throughout.

Hopefully things will ease a bit shortly and we will be able to share some of the excellent new ciders with you. Watch this space about which outlets are open for business and have the new range.