It’s 2004 and fresh from my first forays into cider as a photographer, I’m ready to try my hand at cidermaking because, frankly, it doesn’t sound that hard.

Standing in an overgrown field at the other end of my village in the middle of Somerset, clutching a plastic sack, I eye up the enticing red dots hanging in the distance. Twenty minutes later, I have scrumped far more mystery fruit than anticipated from some woeful looking orchards. Now merely hollowed-out shells, abandoned to insects, I’m full of renewed respect for how bountiful such crap looking trees can be.

Dozens of beautiful red apples are nestled in the grass at my feet, beneath the remains of these wizened trunks. Thanks to at least 90% of them being on the floor, at least I know they’re ripe; a crucial but often overlooked component of great cider. Each has a wonderfully deep, rich hue, somewhere between scarlet and magenta, and the tantalising ripe aroma is sweet, yet spicy.

A combined bite-slurp-suck brings sequential flavour experiences that do all sorts of things in my mouth, making a journey from classic apple sweetness to an almost woody spice that’s followed by a final, slightly sinister bitterness. I had to find out what these are, and what makes them taste so different.

I took a few to a local cider farm to ask if they could identify them. Having got the cidermaker down from his ladder while making important repairs to his mill during harvest, he was most disgruntled that I wasn’t a paying customer. Without hiding his irritation, he took a bite before simultaneously ejecting apple bits and spluttering “Tremlett’s Bitter,” before turning to resume his duties.

This is one of my earliest cider memories. I now know that Tremlett’s Bitter is a traditional full bittersweet cider apple and is a great example of what makes a classic cider apple so different to other varieties. It has an uncommon power to it—one that you don’t expect apples to have—and the clue to its predominant flavour is in its name. It is indeed very bitter and needs careful handling lest it overwhelm naive drinkers, (or inexperienced cidermakers.)

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All true cider apples contain tannins (also known as polyphenols), which are useful for adding texture, and flavour to a finished product. Cidermakers take advantage of these naturally occurring compounds as they contribute a great deal towards taste; they can be bitter and/or spicy, add colour (you never see a pale cider made from traditional cider fruit) and mouthfeel, giving body and texture to the liquid.

As a variety, I’ve heard Tremlett’s Bitter compared to Malbec, and there may be more than a passing comparison in its deep pigmentation—they both contain a fair degree of tannin. Much like the grape, Tremlett’s was traditionally used as a variety to blend with less interesting varieties—yet more recently it is getting some good attention as an option for interesting single variety ciders, or at least as the predominant apple in a blend.

““Time, however, is one of the most expensive of ingredients in cidermaking.””

“Both bitterness and astringency are associated with procyanidins[…] with one sensation gradually blending into the other,” says Cider scientist Andrew Lea when I ask about how polyphenols behave. “As ciders age, the tannins oxidise/polymerise such that the smaller ones become bigger, and drop out.”

In more basic terms, what Andrew means is that they get less bitter over time. Any juice from a variety this punchy benefits from the opportunity to shift its overall balance from bitter to astringent.

Time, however, is one of the most expensive ingredients in cidermaking. In which case, where does it leave more bitter varieties such as Tremlett’s Bitter, and others of its ilk like Bulmers Norman, or Medaille d’Or? Particularly in times when the majority of cider consumers don’t lean towards bitterness.

Apples like these have become backbenchers, the contribution of which is usually blended to the point where it can be drowned out or ignored. Their unique properties are hidden beyond any obvious contribution to the overall flavour and left unable to steer policy or even show characteristic leadership.

The good news is that I believe it is this bitter quality that makes these varieties all the more valuable to smaller cidermakers. Even though they’re much easier to work with as part of a blend, it’s because they’re more difficult to showcase as a predominant or single variety that they command respect when they are allowed to stand alone.

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I’m not sure who Tremlett was, but there have been Tremletts in the West Country since the Norman Conquest. And there are those who have held land in Devon since the 12th Century, their name morphing from ‘Trois-Minettes' to Tremoulet, Trembletts, eventually to a fully anglicised Tremlett.

Devon is the original home of Tremlett’s Bitter, and like cider has a long-established connection with the sea. The county has always produced sailors of note (including Francis Drake, in his infamy) many of whom were also landowners who made cider to accompany their maritime adventuring.

Small scale commercial cidermaking was established in Devon as early as the middle 14th Century. The subsequent several hundred years saw its cider progress in terms of both quality and quantity. I suspect whoever the namesake of Tremlett’s Bitter was, they were likely one of the long-established family of sailors, merchants, customs collectors or military figures of the late Georgian/early Victorian era, about the time the variety was first recorded.

As Tremlett’s properties became more widely recognised, they began to be included in commercial cider orchard mixes. Between the 1950s and 1970s, its popularity boomed and was one of the dozen varieties included in the Taunton Cider orchard mix, which was planted on a massive scale throughout the West Country at the time.

The past two decades have seen the variety fall from popularity on labels, potentially due to ‘bitter’ being a difficult term for less adventurous marketers. In reality, these apples are still enriching present-day commercial cider blends because the trees are still there. Just about.

As a single variety (SV) cider, Tremlett’s Bitter can be sweeter than you might expect, given its name. And not only does it help to offset any lack of body some varieties suffer from, but can actually offset any lingering bitterness, thanks to its classic resinous aroma and peppery flavour.

When I ask cidermakers why they choose Tremlett’s Bitter to make a single variety cider, I usually get the same answer: “because we have lots of them.” No matter how much I want them to say something righteous about its aromatic virtues or amazing piquant textures, I am reminded that pragmatism is an essential characteristic of cidermaking.

“We use Tremlett’s Bitter a lot for our Eau de Vie, [and] there’s some in our Cider Brandy too,” Sam Leach of Somerset’s Wilding Cider tells me. “It brings tannin, rich fruit aroma, and all those autumnal orchard fragrances with its classic bittersweet aroma.”