With the upcoming harvest expected to be up to a third bigger than usual, Sandford Orchards is planning to increase the production of its core ciders and create new varieties with the help of its eight new 50,000 litre tanks.
The installation of the tanks follows a ‘exceptional’ apple haul this year, as Barny Butterfield, Sandford Orchards owner explains: “Anyone with fruit trees in their garden is likely to be experiencing a record crop this year and we are no different.
“A mild spring and the sunniest summer for some time has left our trees groaning under the weight of fruit, and we’re looking forward to a harvest around a third bigger than last year. That’s around 4,000 tonnes of apples! In fact, it looks set to be the biggest harvest I have experienced in my lifetime as a cider maker!
Butterfield adds that the “very un-British weather” has also meant that the apples are ripening ahead of schedule.
“We don’t usually start harvesting our apples until early October but this year looks set to be different,” he said, after the orchard’s apples started dropping in August.
“All our fruit comes from local orchards so we are able to make regular checks on them to identify the optimum moment to harvest. Our inspections throughout the summer have already indicated that this year is set to be an epic harvest and in anticipation of that we have invested in eight new tanks which will increase our capacity by 400,000 litres.
“The extra hours of sunshine that the apples have enjoyed this year should also have boosted sugar levels, which means this could be the sweetest and largest harvest on record for us.
“With our newly increased capacity and these fantastic raw ingredients, we will be pressing 6 days a week from 5am until 9pm to produce more bottles of our much-loved ciders for next summer’s cider drinking. We will be pressing at least 70 different varieties and, amongst them, there are going to be a lot more of the rare apples that we have been identifying in our DNA mapping project. So we’ll be able to do some really interesting small batch blends with them too!”
Sandford Orchards was founded in 2002. Its apples are grown within 30 miles of its press. It only presses ‘true’ cider apples fermented from fresh juice, and allows that juice to mature, age and develop before blending and packaging.
Its best-sellers include Devon Red – a crisp and fruit cider; Red Zero – an alcohol-free cider; and Devon Mist – a hazy cider.
