Although our main focus is beer, CAMRA is also concerned with the promotion of real cider and perry through its offshoot called APPLE. Real cider and perry are natural products: the fermented juice of apples and pears. The natural sugars and yeasts are enough to sustain fermentation. There are an amazing 120 cider and perry producers in the UK, covering at least 27 counties. Certainly here in the north pubs selling cider and perry are rare, yet their popularity at beer festivals shows that people will drink them given a chance.

Unlike beer, cider and perry can only be made when the fruit is ready. October is the month when cider production is in full flow and has been designated national cider and perry month. To celebrate it, CAMRA has decided to launch a competition to find the best pub for real cider. Members of the public have been invited to submit their nominations. Gillian Williams CAMRA’s director of Cider and Perry Campaigning wants people to be able to try a real cider or perry in their local pub. To make this easier, Westons are packaging real cider in wine boxes.

Britain’s apple orchards are under threat. 120 years ago, 186,000 acres of England grew fruit trees. Today, that figure is 44,000, and has halved since 1994. Changes to Common Agricultural Policy subsidies announced earlier this year have led to real fears that Britain’s apple orchards would be grubbed up as being uneconomical. P roduction subsidies start to be withdrawn and agricultural land will instead qualify for a Single Farm Payment of about £200 a hectare. Land with permanent crops such as orchards does not qualify for this payment, and would have to be cleared by 1st January to qualify. Defra has now clarified that some smaller orchards will qualify for subsidies under the environmental stewardship scheme, and also that there will be no grants to farmers who cut down trees. However some farmers with ‘bush’ orchards may still find that annual crops will attract higher subsidies than apple growing, and go ahead with the destruction of their orchards.

Not only could this lead to the loss of many traditional apple varieties, with such evocative names as Ashmead’s Kernel, Slack-my-girdle, Belle de Boskoop and Pitmaston Pineapple, and with complexity of taste to match. It could also deal a fatal blow to our cidermaking heritage. A petition has been running throughout the year to save our orchards: sign it on CAMRA’s website www.camra.org.uk/cider.

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