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 5
30-9-21 1235-1330 14°C damp, low cloud, heavy
Cheeky one this. Owned by one of the nation’s larger
landowners and nicely tucked into an estate so you’d
never know it was there. I’m guessing it was planted
around twenty years ago. Surrounded by permanent
pasture and a Cornish hedge to keep the stock out, it’s
about two acres and consists of forty or so trees, most
of which are Cornish heritage varieties with some
notable exceptions. Look to be on Malling-Merton 106
stocks. The varieties I’m grabbing today are Golden
Harvey (so sweet), Ben’s red, Colloggett pippin, Cornish
honeypinnick, Cornish pine, Longuilles Kernel and
possibly Queens, although the tree is very severely
cankered which may account for the smaller size of
the fruit. Actually, this one is the combination of two
orchards as the blend above somewhat lacked tannin so
an exceptionally rare pear has also gone into the mix –
the pears sourced from elsewhere.
It’s a bit of a schlep across the field to get to the orchard
and the dog’s with me. She’s been patiently sat in the
car for most of the day while I work and deserves
a stretch. Two bags. I’ve never actually visited this
orchard before and came across it whilst perusing the
PTES orchard map- a good resource in some ways, but
contains a great number of unverified data, so needs
cross-checking carefully. Once through the gate into
the orchard itself I let the dog go and she bounces
away into the very long grass. Not much maintenance
done here recently: the wet grass is near thigh-high
and many of the trees are engulfed in bramble, none of
which makes gathering fruit any easier, but it does lend
a feeling of peaceful neglect to the place and makes
me feel pretty safe in terms of being discovered. My
eye is caught first by the bright, golden-yellow of the
Harveys, most of which are now on the ground, but this
variety, also known as the brandy apple, is known for
its extreme sugar content and presses out at more than
twenty Brix in a good year. Don’t see many around
which is weird as it makes for a delicious dessert apple;
they don’t keep well however. I gather as many of these
as I can before moving on to look at what else is on
offer. The Colloggett pippins are always tempting as
they have good flavour and can sometimes make a
decent single-variety. They also happen to be absolutely
enormous and are therefore fast bag fillers. Ben’s red
grabs the eye next. These three make up the most part
and the rest I grab at leisure as I’m mooching about
having a look at what the orchard contains. It’s a nice
little orchard and bears further study.
As I said before, there’s a lot of sugar here, but not much
more to give depth of flavour. By chance, the route home
takes me past a place where I happen to know there
is a population of Pyrus cordata, the Plymouth pear.
This weird orchard is very tucked away, deliberately
so, as the population is on land in the possession of
the same landowner and is a trial in extending the
genetic diversity of this endangered tree with another
venerable institution. These are forbidden fruit. By
removing these, I’m reducing the seed availability to
further the breeding programme this year, which is why
I only grab a few handfuls (although a subsequent visit
revealed that most of the fruit went unharvested and
rot on the ground so I don’t feel too lousy. Austerity?
Funding cuts?). There are only three wild populations
of these trees in the UK, one is a single tree in the car
park of Derriford Hospital and the others are some
hedgerow trees near Truro and outside Plymouth. It is
the only tree species to be protected under the Wildlife
and Countryside Act 1981 Schedule 8 which makes it
an offence to intentionally pick, uproot or destroy any
part of the plant growing wild. Ironically, this means
that this site is the only place in the UK where the fruit
of this species may be obtained whilst committing
offences under the theft act only as these trees are
deliberately planted in what constitutes an orchard
and are therefore not growing wild. Bit edgy though.
There are significant populations in Brittany, Spain and
Portugal, but not here, leading some to suggest, as the
trees constitute part of ancient woodland assemblages
elsewhere, or individuals in ancient hedgerows, that the
UK populations, given their suburban locations, were
introduced relatively recently. The seeds are seldom
viable, hence the recovery programme. The genetics of
the populations are identical, indicating transplant of a
sucker from one site to another at some point, but with
this extremely limited genetic resource, the recovery
programme has extended the diversity as far as possible
by taking pollen from Truro and pollinating a Plymouth
flower and vice-versa. Improbably, offspring from these
crosses were grown and planted at the orchard site with
suckers from both other populations thereby giving as
great a genetic diversity on the new site as possible. This
may mean that the long-term viability of the species is
ensured, but presumably only if the fruit is collected and
the seed disseminated.
The fruit are tiny, marble sized, but possessed of
incredible astringency and tannins as well as great
sweetness when ripe. A few handfuls should be
sufficient to lend their quality to this blend. Rare fruit
indeed. I saved the seed. Maybe some will germinate
next year?