Harvest Is Here!
As our first apples arrive this week, we're in the throes of getting the cidery harvest-ready. Watching the trees all the time – tasting them apples, catching up with orchardists – while also making space back at base for the ciders of tomorrow. It's an exciting time.
Here on Brook House Farm, the hop harvest is already in full swing. tractor loads of fresh hops trundle down the track, every so often dropping off a cone I can't help but pick up.
And our Autumn Collection is now ready to fly. As you can see, Joey has been helping, keeping an eye on matters, and personally we're really excited to share some new tastes, some wonderful returns, plus a couple of worthy additions to our Do It Puritan and Hard Rain ranges.
Details are below, and we've put together a few special selections.
- The Autumn Six - one of each, plus the latest Table Cider
- Last of the Summer Cider - make the most of this Indian summer
- A Taste of Harvest - beautiful flavours, barrel influence, treats for Autumn
- Rare & Beautiful - rare apple varieties, special returns, and the taste of 2019 harvest
pét nat ciderkin with blackcurrant wine, 5% abv
Described as "laugh out loud juice", this is a ciderkin made from super ripe Egremont Russet blended with live blackcurrant wine and sent to bottle to finish fermenting. Beautifully aromatic, with obvious blackcurrant fruit and leaf, on the palate there is everything from gooseberry and rhubarb, to cranberry, apple and grapefruit, all in dangerously crushable guise!
still - 7% abv
The second vintage of one of our most our sought-after bottles, this isn't a cider based on particular apples or specific techniques, or periods of time or types of barrels. More it’s about a unique flavour and aromatic profile, which (perhaps especially for cider) is highly elevated, exotic, perfumed, herbal, laden with all manner of flavours.
still, 7.3% abv
This is new, and we’re very excited by it. Made predominantly from a rare variety of apple called White Beech, along with some Major, a super-rich, sweet spicy apple, and Browns, all juicy citrus, first into tank but then subsequently moving it into four barrels, a mixture of ex-cognac, white burgundy and chianti, to finish fermentation.
This is how the finest ciders would have tasted 200 years ago, clothed with joyful new artwork by our designer Sam Forbes.
sparkling, 7% abv
Another new one, this time to capture the essence of the 2019 harvest, from barrel into bottle. What shone through this difficult vintage was the early variety, Browns Apple, beautiful, fully ripe fruit that came in before the rains, supplemented by later varieties: Dabinett and Harry Masters Jersey, from our home orchard, plus Yarlington Mill from 80-year old trees on a nearby farm. The cider reflects this blend too. On the palate its citrus upfront before the richness of the late varieties and the barrels kicks in to round it all out. Plus a wonderful new original artwork by Ariana Sauder.
Do it Puritan, Damson/Perry 2020
sparkling, 7.5% abv
Handpicking a quarter ton of Shropshire Prune damsons from a gnarly old orchard was just the start. For four weeks we carbonically macerated them with some Thorn and Hendre Huffcap perry pears before pressing into barrel to ferment wild and bottled as a pét nat. The result is an absolutely glorious liquid, summer pudding stuffed in the most joyful glass of juice you might ever taste!