Pressing British Cider Apples

With harvest now in full swing, we headed to Castlemorton, where we press our cider apples, to watch the action first-hand. Every apple we press comes from small, independent growers nearby and, all season long, the fruit arrives by the tractor load - with 14,000 tonnes on this particular day!

Once the Cider apples have been dropped, the fruit is cleaned to remove dirt and debris from the orchard floor. Every apple is checked by eye, and anything that isn’t up to scratch is removed. Once they have made the cut, the 'good' apples are crushed into a pulp and pressed to release the juice. Click on the video below to watch the process.

The fresh juice is pumped straight into our fermentation tanks, and this is where the magic happens. Fermentation is the process of converting the sugar in the apple juice into alcohol. How long it takes depends largely on the temperature outside: the colder it gets, the slower it goes. 

Over the coming weeks the juice will ferment in the tanks to eventually become the base cider for our range of blends.

To view our range of signature and innovative blends, click here.