Apple mystery solved?

The apples from the small tree we thinned in June have now reached their ripe potential. This is a very early apple which rarely stays on the tree later than early September. Unfortunately quite a few have fallen off in the stiff breeze which has been blowing down the valley this week, but enough have survived to make it into this years batch of chutney, and a fair few will be given away as they don't keep too well. The thinning has helped give us a fair crop of decent sized fruit, and in the spirit of the keen amateur I've been pouring over books and web sites in an attempt to identify the variety.

Identifying unknown varieties of apple is a difficult task even for the 'professionals'. The variables of size, shape and colour are almost infinite, and there's the added complication that a particular variety can vary in appearance under different growing conditions. So it's with this in mind that I've made a reasonably confident guess that this apple is in fact a James Grieve.

James Grieve apples are described in the current bible for apple enthusiasts, 'The New Book of Apples' (Joan Morgan & Alison Richards - Ebury Press), as having a '...red flush, stripes over pale green/yellow.' The apple is medium sized, round/conical, and is slightly ribbed. The cavity (the depression the stalk disappears into) has lines of scaly russetting.

These apples certainly look the part, and James Grieve would have been a popular choice around the time this tree was planted. I've also cross-referenced with a few web sites, most of which only serve to confuse the issue, but Nigel Deacon's excellent Diversity website has a good reference to James Grieve with a nice picture of the variety from Church Stretton which looks very similar to ours.

The flavour of our apples is very good, quite tart but with a good rich sweetness too. James Grieve is often described as suitable for use as a cooking apple early in the season, and I can confirm that our apples worked very well in a batch of apple scones this week.

Gretton Beer Festival

The growing success of the Welland Valley Beer Festival in June has often led to talk of a follow-up event later in the Summer. Local villagers must be pretty comfortable with the idea of a beer festival by now, and visitors certainly know where the Welland Valley is. I would have thought that a well organised and publicised smaller event would be almost guaranteed success, even allowing for the ongoing mediocre Summer weather we're experiencing again this year.

So I'm pleased to see that for one day only the three pubs in Gretton have joined forces with the Gretton Sports Club, and organised a festival for the end of August (30th). The Gretton 4 Corners Beer Festival will feature over 40 ales, including a festival special brewed by Potbelly Brewery (see here for the beer list), as well as a small selection of traditional ciders. We will be supplying the Hatton Arms with our Rockingham Forest Cider,and a barrel of Gwynt-Y-Ddraig Barnstormer Cider.

Mark's Law may prevent us from attending this year's event, but I do hope it's a great success. Village pubs need our support more than ever during these difficult times, and when licensees put in the effort to run great events like this, they deserve our support too.

Orchard Hunting

Traditional orchards are rewarding places to explore at any time of the year. Spring blossom time is the highlight for many, but fruitful Summertime, and the stark beauty of a slumbering Winter orchard are equally magical to me. I never tire of the changing seasons, which play out so clearly in a mature orchard.

The picture above, as tranquil a scene of rural England as your likely to find, could easily have been captured in any one of hundreds of unspoilt traditional orchards throughout the West Country, but in fact it was taken this week in the heart of rural Rutland following a spot of Summer orchard hunting.

As a small-scale cidermaker keen to create ciders from locally grown apples, searching out new sources of available fruit has become a bit of an obsession. Driving through villages and open countryside at this time of year, I've always got half an eye on the gardens and farmland I pass, constantly on the lookout for the remnants of old, neglected orchards, or maybe just a single tree laden with a heavy crop of rosy apples. Not every apple tree produces fruit suitable for making good cider, but you'd be surprised how much of this bountiful harvest goes to waste. Very few people seem to know what to do with a glut of apples these days. The crafts of baking, preserving, and just plain enjoying an apple straight from the tree, are sadly dying out.

Sad yes, but quite an opportunity for us, since many of the people we ask are more than happy for us to deal with the nuisance of a heavy crop of apples littering their gardens. The sheep have this small orchard to themselves at the moment, but come late September the owners have kindly given us access to harvest the apples for our cidermaking. It remains to be seen how much fruit the sheep will leave for us, but even if it's only a couple of sacks full, the chance to spend time gathering apples in this lovely space can be nothing less than a total pleasure.

Hare & Hounds Ale Fest

Marks 'Universal Law of Summer Weekends' states that for every weekend that passes with nothing much of interest happening, there will be several more where the diary is so full you'll end up missing at least half the events you'd like to attend. In other words, good things come like buses, infrequently but always in pairs at the very least.

It was this law which prevented our planned visit to the Westernbury Cider & Sausage Festival at the Western pub in Leicester, owing to it clashing with the equally essential Leicester Carnival. Similarly visits to Hollowell Steam & Heavy Horse Show, and the Royal Show in Warwickshire, both fine days out with plenty of interest for the cider drinker, were scuppered by a more pressing engagement in London.

We missed the Tollemache Arms beer festival last weekend due to late night Chicken, Wine, Bowling and Bonhomie with our friends Duncan & Diana (Diana is the talent behind our lovely apple logo, Duncan the current talent behind Hellboy, Phew!). Sorry Tollemache people, it's a good festival for sure, but no competition I'm afraid. Luckily we've been given a second bite of the cherry with sister pub the Hare & Hounds, Great Addington, holding their debut beer festival starting this Friday.

From the Hare & Hounds website: 'Our first annual beer festival runs for 3 days with over 20 local and national beers. The Charles wells "Bombardier Bus" is here, a novelty not to be missed. With A BBQ every day and live music , we guarantee a great weekend, whatever the weather!'

A couple of barrels of our Rockingham Forest Cider will also be in attendance, so with nothing else planned for the weekend it seems we may get the better of Mark's Law for one weekend at least.

New Discovery

Like the first Cuckoo call of Spring (traditionally associated with the tapping of the first barrel of cider), the arrival of new season English Apples in our shops is one to gladden the heart.

It's at this time of year that I break my self imposed boycott of poorly flavoured foreign grown apples, and reaffirm my belief that English apples really are the best in the world. These early English grown varieties such as Discovery, Worcester Pearmain, and Katy are my favourite dessert apples, and I try to search them out whenever possible, particularly as the season is so short.

Early apples like these orangey pink Discovery's have a wonderful aromatic, citrusy flavour which sadly doesn't transfer well to cider, though Katy is used by one Somerset cidermaker to produce a very successful single variety cider that is light, refreshing and very accessible. Soft skinned and easily bruised, they are very poor keepers too, which is all the more reason to eat them up whilst you can.

They're in the shops now, so go get 'em.