Of Pig’s Face and Thorn — Cwm Maddoc Cider and Perry in Broad Oak, Herefordshire
The names tumble off the labels on bottles of Cwm Maddoc’s cider and perry like a census from a fairy tale. Tom Putt, Betty Prosser, Pig’s Face, Foxwhelp, Red Longdon, Kingston Black; a jumble of folk characters, Shakespearean fools, and old cigarette brands.
To most people they would be unfamiliar, perhaps even faintly comical. But to Clare Adamson and Jeremy Harris they are the engine room of Herefordshire’s Cwm Maddoc Cider and Perry, the place their production begins and ends. They are the names of apples and pears.
Photography by Bill Bradshaw
“That’s the fantastic thing isn’t it?” Clare says. “They’re all so different. They all have their own unique flavours.”
To wine lovers, grape names are as familiar as old friends. Ardent beer drinkers can talk you through a phone directory of hops, but for all the hundreds of thousands of drinkers, for all the millions of pints poured annually in the UK, precious few people talk about the varieties of apples used to make cider. Cwm Maddoc are trying to change that.
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“Varieties are the starting point of knowing what a cider or perry might taste like,” Pommelier and landlady of Durham’s The Station House, Susannah Mansfield, tells me. “They help remind us that it’s not just ‘sweet’ and ‘dry’, it’s the aromas, the orchard, the land, and the process that make cider interesting. Listing varieties hints at that in a few words.”
This sentiment is proving increasingly popular in a drinks category whose discussion of flavour has long been simplistic when set against that of its rivals. For decades, cider’s terminology has been broadly limited to a handful of words such as ‘sharp’, ‘tannic’, ‘dry’, ‘medium’, and ‘sweet’. Once we bring in varieties, we can start to talk about flavour.
““From the moment Cwm Maddoc decided they wanted to make cider and perry, they wanted to go about it entirely the right way.””
Clare and Jeremy’s fascination goes back a long way. Before they were one of Herefordshire’s great inside-tip producers, they were Green Party stalwarts with an allotment in Stroud, in neighbouring Gloucestershire. On it, they tended an Ashmead’s Kernel tree, and when they moved to Herefordshire in 1994, the tree moved with them.
“That’s a Gloucestershire apple dating from 1700,” says Jeremy. “I suppose we’ve always been a bit sentimental towards the traditional, interesting varieties. But actually Ashmead’s Kernel’s fantastic, and we learned recently we can make cider from it.”
That tree became the first in the ground of their new orchard; the genesis for their brand, Cwm Maddoc, named for the ancient estate on which their farm lies. 100 more trees followed in 50 different varieties. Apples led to juice, and in 2011, juice led to cider.
“From the moment Cwm Maddoc decided they wanted to make cider and perry, they wanted to go about it entirely the right way,” says Ross on Wye Cider and Perry Company’s Albert Johnson, whose own Herefordshire farm is just fifteen minutes’ drive away. “[To] produce a drink that is true to the fruit in every way—clean, expressive, tasty. That's the right way to make cider.”
To Clare and Jeremy that means hand-picking apples and pears to guarantee ripeness, then fermenting in stainless steel to preserve their flavours. It means using wild, ambient yeasts that live in the air of the cidery itself, instead of pitching a specific strain.
All of their creations are bottled pét-nat, before fermentation has completely finished, to induce a light touch of natural sparkle rather than artificially carbonating—a method inspired by cidermakers in the northern French region of Normandy.
“The best cider I ever tasted was a Normandy cider,” Jeremy explains. “So I wanted something sweet and sparkling because that was my perceived ‘best cider ever’. But since we’ve known Albert Johnson our tastes have become drier and drier.”
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To taste a range of Cwm Maddoc ciders is to zip through an orchard. Their stories are locked in their apples, each bottle a new array of flavours, and scents, and textures, each new variety different—however subtly—from every other of the hundreds growing across South West England.
Yet as gorgeous as their ciders are—the 2018 Kingston Black was a luscious fruit basket of joy, whilst the 2019 Foxwhelp and Pig’s Face blend is a pin-bright swathe of wild strawberry and electric acidity—talking to Clare and Jeremy I get the sense that their greatest pleasure might actually be in perry.
“We’ve made it since 2016,” Jeremy says. “We’d become fascinated by the idea [that] these trees that were decaying, and [by] a drink that no one drank any more, and wondered why not.”
For all that cider remains an undervalued treasure, perry’s unfair obscurity is tenfold. Made from pears in the same way as cider—or wine—it is, at turns, a zingy spear of lime and elderflower, a streak of wet rock and cut grass, or a luscious mouthful of honey and golden fruit.
At its best it can be one of the finest drinks in the world, but even in its British heartland of the Three Counties—Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire—its future is uncertain. Trees are disappearing: abandoned and cleared for farmland and railway lines. Mature trees of varieties like Flakey Bark and Coppy can be counted on your fingers.
“There is extremely low demand for perry made from unique, historical varieties,” says Albert, bluntly. “Such drinks are made only because of the passion and drive of the producer to preserve the cultural tradition.”
Perry’s ancient light has dwindled for decades, but in the last couple of years or so, sales have begun to slowly curve upwards again. Clare and Jeremy are two of its most passionate advocates.
“If this was a bumblebee or a butterfly and they were just declining, people would be worried,” remarks Clare. “And here we have all these wonderful trees, and they’re unique, and they’re several hundred years old. And they’ll just disappear; people will never know they existed.”
Their efforts haven’t been in vain. In 2017 their single variety Oldfield took first place at Herefordshire’s annual, peer-judged, Big Apple Cider and Perry Trials.
“You sit round a table with all the other makers you’re in competition with, and that was the one they chose,” Jeremy explains. “That to me is very satisfying.” Then, with the glimmer of a twinkle in his eyes, he adds: “[As was] beating Tom Oliver.”
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Perhaps more importantly than besting the iconic Tom though, Clare and Jeremy’s efforts are keeping critically endangered pears alive, and there is no better example of this than in their championing of Betty Prosser. This Monmouthshire pear is pressed by only two other makers, and until a few specimens were found in the Monnow Valley it was thought that as few as twelve trees might remain.
“We met somebody at a talk given by the Welsh Perry and Cider Association,” says Jeremy. “We overheard his conversation—he’d got two Betty Prosser trees—and we asked if we could pick his fruit. So for the last three years now we’ve been over. It makes a nice drink.”
“Delicious drink Jeremy,” Clare interjects. “Don’t be understating!”
As it happens, both are selling it short. The 2018 vintage, in particular, is phenomenal: a dazzling, unctuous burst of pears poached in wine, floral honey, and the redness of strawberry jam, all set off by a tingle of fizz and the softest nip of cleansing acidity. It is a nectar drink, a glassful of dreams and wonder.
How can something like this be so hidden, you ask yourself, as it sparkles across your palate. How can this pear be one bad storm away from vanishing off the face of the earth?
““We have all these wonderful trees, and they’re unique, and they’re several hundred years old. And they’ll just disappear; people will never know they existed.””
The story isn’t over. Someone in the neighbouring village is planting an orchard and has emailed Clare and Jeremy asking for scions; young wood cuttings of particular varieties to be grafted to existing trees. Pears are at the top of his list. “And he asked particularly about the Betty Prosser,” says Jeremy. “So that’s great.”
With Betty’s future a touch more secure, Clare and Jeremy’s search for traditional and interesting fruit goes on. They’ve unearthed an entirely new variety in somebody’s garden; to their knowledge only three trees exist.
“The owners named it after their farm,” Jeremy tells me. “They called it Cefnydd Hyfryd—lovely ridge.”
Bottled for the first time this year, Cefnydd Hyfryd is instantly compelling. Fresh, ripe, revelling in the bloom of youth and the softness of pear fruit. I instantly find myself looking forward to the 2021 vintage. A new variety has proven itself in perry and our world of flavour is bigger.
“And we must tell you about the latest apple,” beams Jeremy, when I ask about the trees they’re planting in their own orchard. “It’s a sport that came from a pip. And it looks good, and it keeps well. We’ve called it Cwm Maddoc Beauty.”
When an apple pip is planted it grows into an entirely new variety. There’s no knowing what Cwm Maddoc Beauty’s parent apple was, but the child fruit is something that has never grown anywhere else before. I ask the important question: has it been made into cider yet? But Jeremy says the tree’s yields are currently too low. Give it a few years and watch this space.
“It’s the most delicious apple,” Clare says, “one of the best I’ve ever eaten.”
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Why do people like Clare and Jeremy want you to know about Thorn, and Pig’s Face, and Kingston Black? Why bother with these unknown, oddly-shaped, difficult fruits when others would be easier to grow? Why wrestle with weather, pests, disease and the fickleness of fate to keep half-forgotten apple and pears alive? Why does it matter whether ‘Tom Putt’ goes on the bottle?
It matters because they are more than just fruit, they are the bones and ichor of cider and perry. All with their own identity and flavour—unique and precious as snowflakes.
They whisper to us down centuries of orchard. They are why no two ciders taste alike and they deserve the respect of voice and thought, and the limelight of back labels. From Ashmead’s Kernel to Betty Prosser, and from Flakey Bark to Cefnydd Hyfryd, to speak a thing’s name is to grant it a soul.
“If I was buying a cider and drinking it,” Jeremy says, “I’d like to know what it was, what it was made from. The more information you can give, the better.”
“If a maker lists varieties and methods it’ll intrigue the customer,” Susannah agrees. “And then the conversations are where we can really open up this world.”
