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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...

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The 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...

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New 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...

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Musings

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 more

John 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...

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Pomona, 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...

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Cider; 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...

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The 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 more

Graft 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...

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New 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 ...

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George 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 ...

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Myths 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 ...

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John 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 ...

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The 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...

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Lord Scudamore

The first Viscount Scudamore was born in 1601, and was baptised at Holme Lacy, the Scudamore’s primary residence in Herefordshire, just downstrea...

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Christopher 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...

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Sir 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...

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Royal 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...

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Captain 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...

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Glass 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 ...

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Alan 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...

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Nitrogen 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...

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Cider 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 ...

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Percy 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...

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The 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...

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The 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...

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Ralph 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 ...

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Cider 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...

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Museum 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, ...

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William 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 ...

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Rev 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...

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Abscission 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...

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John 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...

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Perry 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...

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Wooden 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...

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William 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 ...

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Cider and the invention of sparkling champagne.

   

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Sir 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 ...

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Apple 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 ...

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Isaac 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...

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Cider 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...

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Vintage. 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 ...

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Ode 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...

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Bumble 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...

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Zork 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...

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The 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...

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Cider 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...

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Devon 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,...

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Scudamore Cider Flute

Two views This flute also called the ‘Chesterfield’ flute, (family descent through the Scudamore-Stanhope family to the Earls of Chesterfield),...

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Thomas 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...

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Talk 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...

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John 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...

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Cider 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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