A World of Cider

Day three of my Churchill Fellowship sponsored, world exploration of cider had been a great success, I had been to Perry's cider at Dowlish Wake, Somerset. I had watched and filmed cider apples being milled and crushed in the old way and then entered their modern shop and tried their cider, made notes and purchased a bottle of Redstreak cider for later evaluation. I had then moved onto Barrow Hill tasted cider, made notes and purchased a bottle of their medium sweet for later evaluation and then driven to Street near Glastonbury. On the way in I drove right past a sign stating Heck's cider, turned the car around, parked, not an easy thing to do in England and I was soon the happy owner of a bottle of their Kingston Black. The day before I had been miserably lost, driving along country lanes in ever decreasing circles and getting nowhere, so I was overjoyed at my success. I drove back to my accommodation, The Butchers Arms at Carhampton where the famous mid winter festival of wassailing of the apple trees and rebirth has been a fixture of the local calendar for many hundreds of years. I had a cold shower, I didn't seem able to get the hot water to work and then I walked to Withycombe the next village along where a gentleman named Jim Binder lived.

Jim Binder was the singer of the wassail and as I wanted to find out about the ancient culture associated with cider I wanted to track him down. Withycombe was a lovely old English village built on the side of a hill. I asked around and the locals directed me to Jim's door. I knocked, introduced myself as an Australian cider maker and after a little bit of hesitancy, I was shown in and introduced to Carhampton's High Priest of wassailing. He was sitting in an armchair very relaxed, Janet his wife found him a shirt to put on, to be polite, and he started to talk. He was a fascinating man full of local knowledge and passionate about the wassail. Jim told me that he heard about the wassail at Carhampton when he was 14 and he jumped on his bike and cycled down to Carhampton from his home several miles away in Porthlock on the 17th of January that year to see the wassail and he said he has hardly missed one since.

Twenty years ago the last of the old singers died and he was asked to become the new singer and sitting in his lounge chair surrounded by cigarette smoke he started to sing the wassail songs. He sang well, he sang very well, he has a deep rich voice, "if only he could be recorded and his voice and his knowledge saved," I thought. I felt a little like the old English folk music enthusiasts who in the nineteenth century had toured England recording and saving old English folk songs. Jim's singing was like an old cider made from real cider apples, a bit rough around the edges but deep and rich and powerful, he was what we would call in Australia a living legend. He gave me a recording of his wassail which is still coming to Australia by post and I walked back to Carhampton in the dark. I felt rather good because in three days not only had I been able to try some excellent English cider but I had really been able to get right to the bottom of one famous English cider ritual and that's how the whole Churchill Fellowship study tour went. I had some very frustrating days where nothing seemed to go right in spite of all my preparation and then I had days where everything fell into place and I learnt so much about cider that I couldn't even begin to write down what I had discovered and I am still trying to quarry it out of my brain now.

The Leominster Morris Men were another highlight. Just watching them in action brought home to me the vigour, passion, commitment and even violent enthusiasm of real folk culture. It was the Big Apple at Much Marcle one of hundreds of events staged in the U.K. to celebrate Apple Day around the date of October the 23rd. I had been on a tour of Weston's Cider the big noise in cider at Much Marcle. I had visited a few smaller concerns and then I sat down to await the Leominster Morris Men and when they turned up they were a sight to behold in their traditional heavy work boots, and black trousers. They were decorated with bells and wore highly coloured jackets that looked like floral curtains, every one was different. There were ribbons on their hats, jackets and trousers and those hats, each Morris Man decorated his own hat with flowers, one man's hat was a pith helmet, the flowers were scrumped from hedgerows or neighbours gardens and they looked a sight, an imposing sight, an impressive sight. As they rolled up each one looked more outstanding than the last, they seemed like giants or demi gods emerging from the woodland. They moved the table I was sitting at so I got invited to their table and they poured me out a pint of Old Rosie a strong cider and we became instant friends. After plying me with cider they got up to dance and dance they did, or should I say commenced battle. They all carried sticks and as they bashed at each other and stamped their big work boots accompanied by violin and accordion the din was tremendous. In the end I even got roped in to be a Morris Man myself and then we all sat down and they explained to me about the origin of Morris Men, about their decline in WWI and the revival around the middle of last century. They also told me of the apple tree ritual, the wassail they perform mid winter in the local orchards. I watched them perform at a second location and this time they shared some of their own Kingston Black cider with me.

After England I visited Frankfurt in Germany, in fact I went to Sachsenhausen just south of Frankfurt and discovered a town with a complete cider culture, it was quite amazing. My taxi driver told me that every day after work he would drink some cider and it was good for the blood. Beer, he said, was bad. On day thirteen of my tour I purchased a Bembel, a traditional and quite beautiful apple wine jug from two diminutive and ancient frauleines who remembered the bombing of Frankfurt in WWII. I visited an Apple wine museum in the main tourist plaza and tried one of Frankfurts famous dishes that are used to accompany apple wine, Green Sauce, which actually was made from herbs and yogurt accompanied by boiled eggs and boiled potatoes and it was delicious. After the museum I walked to an old apple wine house called The Squirrel, Zum Eichkatzerl and the owner who befriended me and gave me lots of booklets on apple wine said that the best apple wine garden was straight across the road and called Zu Den 3 Streuben where the 75 year old owner still made his own apple wine in the traditional way.

I crossed the road to see what all the fuss was about. When imagining an apple wine garden don't think of trees and flowers but think of a traditional German bar. This one was very simply decorated with timber half way up the walls, long tables and benches and a long wooden bar. On the bar was mounted a giant bembel full of the local apple wine. The bembel was on a frame to make pouring easy. The place was very busy not with tourists, or even German students or yuppies but with locals. The apple wine was a bit stronger than elsewhere, a bit like old style English farmhouse rough scrumpy. I ordered Rippchen mit Kraut und brot and when the grilled pork sauerkraut and bread arrived it went beautifully with the local drop served in a special glass decorated with lozenge shapes on its side. This place served local food with the local apple wine and the crowd were all locals. I had entered an enclave of Frankfurt cider culture and it was for this that I had packed my bags back in Australia and travelled across the world to discover and record the tradition and the culture in the eight main cider regions, I felt that I was really getting somewhere.

Spain has some really interesting traditions to accompany their ciders. In the state of Asturias I visited the cider town of Villaviciosa and I wrote in my journal: "I wondered through the twisting and turning streets, every shop seems to sell cider or something to do with cider. The patisseries sell small apples made from marzipan and giant chocolate apples and something else called Borrachiras De Orago De Sidra. I saw a travel agents with a cider display, a haberdashery with apple decorated cloth for sale, nick knack shops sell little plastic men and animals pouring out cider from a bottle held local fashion above ones head. The local hardware shop sells cider bottling machines, plastic cider barrels and even the butcher sells packets of concentrated apple."

I strolled along to the local Roxs Sideria, there are actually lots of Siderias in Villaviciosa, it was a high ceilinged joint with tall windows and shutters, simple tables and chairs, on the walls were old photographs of the town and of cider making, great hams and strings of sausages hung up behind the bar. The floor was tiled and a gutter ran along the bottom of the bar both these features were necessary due to the way the cider was poured and drunk! I ordered sidra, the bar man opened a bottle of cider, grabbed a wide mouthed glass and he held the bottle above his head and the glass down low and he poured the cider through the air catching it in the glass until there was about an inch or two of bubbly aerated cider, then I drank the frothing liquor in one gulp, threw the dregs on the floor and put down the glass. At some stage, and I never worked out when, the bar man would return and pour me out a second glass. It was a fully fermented totally dry cider a bit like German apple wine. If you drink it in the conventional way it is fairly tart but by pouring it through the air the taste changes dramatically, it was like drinking a still fermenting, young cider.

A few days later I was in the cider museum in Astigarragra and the woman who was showing me around said, " now we do the church,". I thought, what is she talking about, " now we do the church" she said again, I didn't understand but I was willing to try anything. She gave me a typical Spanish wide mouthed cider glass and walked over to a great vat of cider and turned on a tape high on the face of one of the vats and a stream of cider came spurting out and I had to catch it in my glass. That was the Txoxt or with the Basque pronunciation the cheertch, the word was a transcription of the sound of the cider pouring from the barrel and yes, I did catch it. So here in Astigarragra was the Basque variation on the Asturias tradition of throwing the cider from a great height into a glass and come the new year the Basque cideries have a great festival of eating and drinking that emerged from the tradition of the Txotx when restaurateurs come to the cider house and test the new cider and order their cider for the year.

In France the cider was totally different, it was a naturally sweet and naturally bubbly drink. Normandy is in fact a land of dairy cows and apple orchards. I went to the Fete Du Cidre at Beuvron en Auge. I parked my little car and walked. There were people selling apples, Boskoops and Reinettes amongst others, there was great round traditional bread, pain de campagne, for sale, there were sacks of onions, sacks of chestnuts, ducks and geese in cages, appellation controllee camembert, pottery, cast iron things, small barrels, apple donuts, cold meats, Foix Grass and in the centre of it all a French peasant built up a traditional cider press and started to press out the raw cider. And there was cider, lots of cider for sale and calvados, French apple brandy. The place was teaming with shoppers, ladies with little dogs, men with big dogs, English tourists, refugees from the tour de France all kitted up and wondering lost with their bicycles, yuppies from Paris, old people and even locals, and they all bought and carried off the goodies. I spoke to an Englishman whose arms were full of bottles of cider, "What sort of cider did you buy?" I asked "Who knows" he said "it will all be delicious."

The Americans, especially the New Englanders, once had a great tradition of cider making however with the advent of the temperance movement which encouraged farmers to grub up their orchards, followed by the great depression and then prohibition, the American cider industry collapsed. Farmers sold their orchards to real estate developers and even though the prohibition laws were repealed the cider industry did not recover. Today however a small but ever growing group of Americans are very serious about their cider and they hold an annual Apple Days at Franklin County Massachusetts. I went along and it was unlike any cider fare in England or France, Germany or Spain which are all public affairs like farmers markets and festivals. The Franklin County Apple Days was more a conference of interested people in the cider industry. It was all very serious but I enjoyed it thoroughly and discovered that a lot of good cider is being made in the USA. They use new techniques learnt from Europe but they also use techniques harking back to the traditional ciders of America. One particularly serious event was a cider and cheese matching and not only were the American ciders of surprisingly good quality but the cheeses were excellent as well. At the apple days the organizers were particularly chuffed at having a participant who had travelled all the way from Australia to be there and I met and spoke to many of the new breed of American cider makers.

Before I left America to wend my way home, I took an Amtrak (train) down to the old Seaport town of Mystic where a steam cider mill was still operating after 150 years. At Clyde's Cider Mill I was able to see something rather special and to try the cider that was made in the pre-prohibition, pre-depression and pre-temperance movement style. It was a version of basic old fashioned New England Hard Cider and it was eye opening to drink it and if I had drunk too much it would have been more than eye opening! I had been forming a hypothesis about old fashioned American hard cider and suddenly it came to me why hard cider was called hard cider and why the temperance movement hated it so. Hard cider is hard in the alcoholic sense, a bit like whiskey and bourbon, a hard alcoholic drink which packs a punch.

Conclusions

I have only written down a few extracts from my notes which I intend to publish in my book on cider later this year. I learnt about food and cider all over the world from big crusty ploughman's in England, to a type of savoury crepe in France called Gallettes, to Chorizos with beans in Spain, Sauerkraut and grilled pork in Germany and the come what may eat what you will casual style of America. I explored the old ritual of cider especially wassailing the apple orchard, I met and became friends with the Leominster Morris Men and Jim Binder the singer of the wassail in Carhampton. I visited Cider houses in England, Apple Wine Gardens in Germany, Siderias in Spain, Creperies in France and the big open farmers' market style orchard shops of New England. I drank and noted the differences between the tart ciders of Germany, the sweet and bubbly ciders of France, the oxygen infused ciders of Spain and the seriously good single varietal ciders of Somerset and the interesting new wave ciders of North America. I met and spoke with cider makers, I explored, with the assistance of David Pickering from Australia, apple varieties, I was shown over cider factories in every country I visited. I met cider drinkers and spoke with them, I explored shops of all sorts to evaluate the culture of cider, I went to cider fares, fates and conventions, I even drank cider. What I was trying to do was get a feel for the world of cider, where it is today, where it has come from and where Australia, a country that I believe can grow the best apples in the world, fits in with all of this and how the Australian cider industry can move forward. I looked at everything I could because to me an industry is not a state of the art factory or a couple of academics giving a course or a restaurant offering gallettes and cider or enthusiasts copying a foreign cider ritual but all of these things and much more. To me knowledge and understanding is the foundation upon which a new industry can grow and prosper and finally some time this year my book on cider past present, the future the culture the traditions and the food, how to make it will be published watch the site for information.