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The Cider Orchard Year
The orchard year is a wonderful trip watching the seasons come and go. Where does it start? With the domant bare trees. the blossom in Spring. The fruitlets forming. The harvest of the apples. The processing of the apples or the fermenting of the juice into cider. The long slow maturation of the...
Read moreThe history of riddling
Riddling is the term for the most common way of concentrating the lees in bottle fermented or sparkling wines and cider. (A stage not performed with Pet Nat which sadly means by the end of the bottle if nor carefully poured the wine is cloudy with the lees or spent yeast). However Champagne did...
Read moreNew Cider Boook: The Lost Orchards, rediscovering the forgotten cider apples of Dorset.
I highly recommend this new book on apples by the acclaimed cider and apple writer Liz Copas with Nick Poole The Lost Orchards: Rediscovering the forgotten cider apples of Dorset. Published by Little Toller books. There is much more to this book than the name suggests. Not only are lost orchards...
Read moreMusings
The Cider Orchard Year
The orchard year is a wonderful trip watching the seasons come and go. Where does it start? With the domant bare trees. the blossom in Spring. The...
Read moreJohn Adams 2nd President of USA and cider
It seems John Adams reputation for drinking cyder is a little over egged. John Adams the 2nd President of the US wrote just 2 entries in his extens...
Read morePomona, the Roman Goddess for orchard cares
Pomona was the Roman goddess of fruitful abundance and plenty in their myths. Her name comes from the Latin word pomum, "fruit", specifically orch...
Read moreCider; yeast; and sulphur smells.
The general belief is that sulphur odours (rotten eggs) are created when yeast are stressed and lack nutrients, especially nitrogen. This is a true...
Read moreThe history of riddling
Riddling is the term for the most common way of concentrating the lees in bottle fermented or sparkling wines and cider. (A stage not performed wi...
Read moreGraft Incompatability in apples and pears.
After a talk I gave on the history of cider which mentioned grafting, I was asked a question, why do grafts in humans fail but not in apples. I w...
Read moreNew Cider Boook: The Lost Orchards, rediscovering the forgotten cider apples of Dorset.
I highly recommend this new book on apples by the acclaimed cider and apple writer Liz Copas with Nick Poole The Lost Orchards: Rediscovering the ...
Read moreGeorge Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and Lord Scudamore in C17th Century English Politics
In Seventeenth Century England the Kind was God’s appointed instrument of justice and Governance on Earth. This held through the reigns of James I ...
Read moreMyths and Legends of Cider
In this section I am keen to find any evidence of facts behind cider myths. Julius Caesar recorded Celts drinking crab apple cider on his 55 BC ...
Read moreJohn Evelyn, Life and Cider
John Evelyn was born on his father’s estate at Wotton Surrey, on 31 October 1620; he was the grandson of George Evelyn, introducer to England and ...
Read moreThe Curious case of the Hartlib Papers
Samuel Hartlib 1600 - 10th March 1662 was a great but mainly forgotten intelligencier of the 17th C, with links throughout England Europe and Amer...
Read moreLord Scudamore
The first Viscount Scudamore was born in 1601, and was baptised at Holme Lacy, the Scudamore’s primary residence in Herefordshire, just downstrea...
Read moreChristopher Merrett Physician and founding member of Royal Society
Christopher Merrett was one of a group of 17th century gentleman scientists, nobleman and polymaths who established the Royal Society. Merrett was...
Read moreSir Paul Neile, Royal Society and Cyder
Son of Richard Neile, Archbisop of York, ( and incidentally interrogated the last namer to be burnt at the stake for heresy, Edward Whitman in 161...
Read moreRoyal Society and Cider
The Royal Society originated on November 28, 1660, when 12 men met after a lecture at Gresham College, Bishopgate, London, by Christopher Wren (th...
Read moreCaptain Silas Taylor, cidermaker soldier, antiquarian musician and spy!
Little is known about Silas Taylor although he was an important person in the story of cider. Time has been harsh to many. History concentrating o...
Read moreGlass making Newcastle and Cider!
Nowadays, Newcastle upon Tyne is rarely associated with glass making, let alone its principal players. However it had a prominent roll to play. A ...
Read moreAlan Turing and the apple
On Monday June 7, 1954 Turing died in his bed in Holly Mead, his house in Wilmslow, a town in Cheshire, where he lived close to his work at Manche...
Read moreNitrogen and cider
A topic of the moment with agricultural emissions run off and degradation of waterways and climate change high on the agenda here in NZ is nitrog...
Read moreCider things that make me happy (in no particular order)
With credit to Adam Well and Cider Review. Please compil and post your list Knowing that more varieties of apples and pears are used to make ...
Read morePercy Bulmer
The founding member of Bulmers Cider was Henry Percival "Percy" Bulmer, the younger son of the rector the Reverend Charles H. Bulmer and his wi...
Read moreThe punt in a bottle
Ever wondered why a wine bottle has a dimple on the bottom? Some people have suggested so the sommelier looks cool as he serves the wine! Certainl...
Read moreThe Origins of Domesticated Apples
On the forested flanks of the Tian Shan mountains; Alexander the great is credited with finding apples in Kazakhstan. Apples started their jour...
Read moreRalph Austen. Horticulturist and Puritan
An early and often overlooked author in orchard husbandry cider history is Ralph Austen. Born about 1612 he was embroiled in the Reformation and ...
Read moreCider making and religion in C17th England
A question that has intrigued me. Why did cider making blossom in the early 17th Century England? Wine making did not experience a similar develop...
Read moreMuseum of Cider
The Cider Museum is a museum in Hereford, England, about the history of cider. The museum was set up as a Trust in the 1970s by Bertram Bulmer, ...
Read moreWilliam Lawson
The second writer in the 17th C of note on cider and orcharding. c.1554-1635. Lawson was a graduate of Christ Church College Oxford and vicar of ...
Read moreRev John Beale
Rev John Beale, an extraordinary vicar. Central to the early development of quality cider in England He was baptised in the village of Yarkhill w...
Read moreAbscission of apples
Apple trees are now often seen with apples but no leaves into autumn. This is because of climate change. The change in prolonging warmer temper...
Read moreJohn Taverner Certaine Experiments Concerning Fish and Frvite
The history of English Cider works of antiquity starts in mid C17th. I until recently would consider Ralph Austen to be the first major english la...
Read morePerry Pears in New Zealand
Known varieties of Perry Pears are rare if not unknown. There are some wildings ( which of course how the named varieties came about in the first...
Read moreWooden teeth (cogs) on machinery!
Wood Cut of Apple Tree, Marco Bussato 1612 Giardino d'Agricoltura. Ever been to an old water mill in the UK? Hopefully so; there are qu...
Read moreWilliam of Cloudeslie
Not as well know as Robin Hood nor William Tell, William of Cloudeslie and his companions Adam Bell and Clim of the Clough were 3 outlaws in ...
Read moreSir Kenelm Digby Courtier, Diplomat, natural philosopher astrologer, lover. And the inventor of the wine bottle?
Sir Kenelm was born in 1603 he was the son of Sir Everard Digby who was executed in 1606 for his involvement in the Gun Powder Plot. Kenelm was a ...
Read moreApple Lore. A calendar of apples by Henry Bull
Henry Bull, one half of the Duo Hogg and Bull who gave us the Herefordshire Pomona and also The Apple Pear as Vintage Fruits. included much more ...
Read moreIsaac Newton and apples.
Isaac Newtown was an early Fellow of the Royal Society. His theory of gravity is well known to school boys the world over. Most is true but some ap...
Read moreCider glasses
Cider from the 1640s became a drink of the nobility as well as a farm drink. War with France interrupted supplies of wine and raised national fervo...
Read moreVintage. Its meaning for Cider.
At TeePee Cider we make Vintage Cider. Vintage has two meanings in cider. Firstly cider made with cider apple varieties recognised as making a ...
Read moreOde to Nature
At TeePee Cider we aim to work with rather than against Nature. An orchard is not a natural place, but it can be a place where Man and Nature c...
Read moreBumble bees and apple pollination.
Apples trees are rarely self fertile and apples need pollen to be transferred from the stamen to ovule, to form. Hence apples trees are reli...
Read moreZork caps
It seems like just a few years ago that the only quality wine makers using the screwcap were in New Zealand. Cork ruled supreme. Other clos...
Read moreThe Babycham phenomena
BabyCham, a perry ( pear cider) made by Showerings, initially a brewery company is key to cider drinks on many levels, juice, storage fermenta...
Read moreCider Tax Riots
Cider was a common drink in the West country from the 14th Century and formed part of wages of labourers until outlawed by the Truck Act of 1887. U...
Read moreDevon Colic
Sir George Baker Devon colic was an illness that affected people in the English county of Devon during parts of the 17th and 18th centuries,...
Read moreScudamore Cider Flute
Two views This flute also called the ‘Chesterfield’ flute, (family descent through the Scudamore-Stanhope family to the Earls of Chesterfield),...
Read moreThomas Knight & the Pomona Herefordiensis
The first illustrated pomology book in Britain and the world was written in 1811 by Thomas Knight, orchardist and fruit breeder. Pomona Herefordien...
Read moreTalk given to the 3rd NZ Cider Festival 2018
It was great to be invited to talk at the 3rd NZ Cider festival on the history of cider in its “Golden Era” in England. A time when cider matched a...
Read moreJohn Worlidge 1640–1700
John Worlidge or John Woolridge was an agriculturalist, who lived in Petersfield, Hampshire, England. He was considered a great expert on rural aff...
Read moreCider a Poem in two Books: John Philips
. “with notes provincial, historical and classical” by Charles Dunster 1791 An extraordinary book. Cider, A Poem written in 1708 in the form ...
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