Neil has started planning for pressing already – the new press has to be installed and configured, plus apples and storage to be sorted out. The pressing season always looms close after the busy summer months, and needs to be thought out. It’s probably the most important part of the year for Worley’s – everything hangs on the quality of the fruit and getting the pressing stage exactly right. The best juice makes the best cider – we don’t add lots of water to our ciders, so the apples and their juice has to be the best we can press.
Best juice
It works, we’ve just won a two-star rating in the Great Taste Awards for our lovely Special Reserve. These are the Oscars of UK Food & Drink and are run by the Guild of Fine Food We’re very proud of this achievement – it’s a cracking cider and our mission this year is to tell as many people about it as possible! Why not.
Special Reserve is a ‘keeved’ cider, which means the pressed juice is specially treated to reduce the level of ‘nutrient’ in it. This nutrient is naturally occurring in apple juice and is kind of like vitamins for yeast, so its scarcity makes the yeast struggle ad results in a very slow fermentation. After a couple of months or so, the yeast will almost stop working and – if you’ve done it right – will result in a naturally sweet, lower-alcohol cider.
The trick then is to catch the very tail end of the fermentation after the cider is bottled so the cider is effectively bottle-conditioned – in other words, it makes its own fizz. We start to sell any vintage once the cider has reached a lightly-conditioned, medium sweetness, but a very gradual fermentation will always contiune in the bottle if – like us – you don’t subsequently pasteurise them. So it’s an unpasteurised, unfiltered, naturally sweet and bottle-conditoned cider that delivers a cider of balanced complexity with gentle sweetness and mellow tannin.
At the office…
On a sunny day, there’s no better place to be. Photos sum it up better than words.
Pub of the week
The Maltings looks like the kind of place we’d settle in for a pint or two. Our Twitter friends, the Maltings in York regularly carry a box of Worley’s Cider, so if you’re in York at any point seek out this top pub, with real ciders and ales on all the time. Food available in the daytime – we particularly like the sound of the burnt bread (cheese toasties to you and me!). Cheers Shaun & all!
Chill out, Winchester here we come
Into the summer swing here at Worley’s. Plenty of outside events to keep us busy, and even though the weather’s sometimes been dodgy, the cider’s been flowing. The Cheese and Chilli Festivals have been wonderful this year – always good, they seem to have really got into their stride in 2017. Downton Brewery serve their excellent beer next door, and there’s everything you could want from a Cheese and Chilli perspective. If you’ve not been yet – there’s one more for 2017, in Winchester on 19th & 20th August. www.cheeseandchillifestival.com.
Tickets available in advance or on the door for a little bit more.
You can get a delicious pint of cider, plus we have our full range of chilled bottles including our starry Special Reserve. See you there? Say hello!