This cider was made in 2021 as part of the research carried out in writing 'A Vagrant's Pomona'. It is made entirely from fruit removed without the owner's permission and may or may not taste better for it.

Orchard 4
16-9-21 1635-1725 18°C Raining and muggy
This one’s a little gem. Small and perfectly formed. It
had been under my nose all this time and I never knew
of its existence until a conversation with an indiscreet
assessor of Higher Level Stewardship agricultural
funding let slip he was trying to find it. He also told
me the owners’ names. There must be about thirty
trees planted up against the corner of a field across a
field and surrounded by other farmland. Not visible
from the road and no nearby footpaths, it’s enclosed
by its own willow topped hedge. Google maps is a very
useful tool. The majority of the trees are dessert and
culinary fruit: There’s Discovery, Egremont Russet, Red
Worcester, Cox (not in great shape), Bramley’s Seedling,
Grenadier and some others I don’t recognise as well as a
Conference pear and two trees of small crabs one green
one red. There’s also a Dufflin. I would guess the trees
were planted in the mid 90s.
We park about fifty metres from the field gate and
get bagged/coated up. Tess is with me. It’s actually
raining pretty hard and I’m fretting about the camera
(again – can’t get used to it). Up and over the gate
and along the edge of the first field to the hedge gap
into the next field. Pretty sheltered to this point and
feel safe, we make our way across the open pasture
of the second field and as we get to about the halfway
point, we disturb a pair of roe deer grazing along the
orchard hedge. Simultaneously I whisper ‘ooh, deer’ as
Tess hisses ‘Shit! Alsatians’ and her adrenaline surges
momentarily – she has a particular dislike of these dogs
having had poor previous experience and believed us
about to be rushed by two attack dogs – no wonder
she’s scared. ‘It’s ok’ I say, as the alarmed deer scarper,
bouncing over the adjacent hedge and out of sight,
‘it means there’s no one else here’. We agree that this
is likely so, but she asks me if I’d ever considered the
possibility of guard dogs. I hadn’t. Never seen a guard
dog in an orchard, but concede there’s always a first
time.
As we go into the orchard itself we feel immediately
safe and enclosed, totally surrounded by hedge and
fruit trees, the smell of the downed fruit is intoxicating
in the rain and this feels good. My heart sinks however
as it becomes clear we’re not the first on the scene.
There’s obvious evidence of trample in the grass and
the bloody Dufflin’s been rinsed. This is not good news.
I was relying upon this apple to give a bit of depth to
the blend – without it, it’s mostly dessert fruit which
can often make for something a bit thin and acidic
once the sugar’s gone. Can be a nice minerality to that
sharpness, but nevertheless I’m chuntering about it
for a minute or so as we look around. I resolve to grab
some of the crabs to add a bit of tannin to this blend.
The discoveries and russets look amazing on the tree
– they’ve both lost their leaves, it’s been a bad year for
scab, but the fruit itself without foliage is lit up bright
gold with no reflection and deep magenta in the dull
light. It’s a bit early for the russets and a bit late for the
discos, but beggars… We set to filling the bags. Tess
also spies a big blue hydrangea lurking along of the
hedge and grabs an armful of those blooms for drying.
The feeling of the rain on our faces in the warm early
autumn is enlivening, especially as I’d spent the day in
front of a screen and was itching to get out. It fosters
an awareness of the animal within, there’s an old
feeling, a directness of approach when faced with this
abundance, grab what you can, it won’t be here next
time, or who knows when you’ll pass by again, but this
is tempered by the bags we carry. We don’t need to
eat our fill, we can carry, we can store. Old tech, same
relevance and actually, the full bags of wet apples are
really bloody heavy. We’ve loaded up and I know there’s
enough to press out a couple of gallons, hopeful that the
crabs will temper the blend. Wet and grinning we make
our way back to the car and buoyed by the deliciousness
of the dessert fruit, we hit another orchard on the way
home to load up with more than enough to press for
juice and subsequently press out two gallons of dessert
fruit juice, which we bottle in 750s, add ascorbic and
pasteurise with a view to saving for brightening late
winter days. Disco juice.