Cider

Blue Barrel cidery is based in the neighbouring village of Oakington, and we met up with them last summer to find out how we could use our orchard apples to make cider. As well as being on the same page as us from an environmental standpoint, they really know their stuff. Their ciders have won awards and they are regularly on judging panels of cider competitions. Their passion for cider is infectious and we couldn’t have been in better hands with our first bulk cider-making foray.

We decided first to make a single-variety cider from our early Discovery apples, and picked these a bit earlier than usual due to the intense heat last year. Ems told us that after a weekend away they came home to find that the apples on one of their Discovery trees had actually cooked on the tree!

We took the apples over to their beautiful converted stables cidery and had a fun day of pressing the juice and filling a barrel, which we left in their expert care.

Earlier this year Vicky went over to bottle the cider with Leo, capping each bottle individually by hand. We were able to use a lino-cut print that Vicky made as part of the labels which were created by Blue Barrel’s designer Joseph Lipscomb design.

This cider is now available on the farm alongside a selection of other Blue Barrel Ciders (some of which also contain some of our apples – we were able to help them out as we had too many and they had too few last year!). You can buy on-site pre-order if you’re booking a stay or drop us an email if you’d like to come and buy some.