Sandford Orchards is celebrating huge success at the Devon County Show after winning seven out of a possible nine medals.
Barny Butterfield in the Sandford Orchards
It took reserve champion and supreme champion with ciders created from ancient apples which have been newly discovered as part of its DNA mapping project.
“We pressed long-forgotten apple varieties discovered whilst working with the University of Bristol to uncover and preserve lost cider apple cultivars,” said Barny Butterfield, founder of Sandford Orchards.
“We entered the resulting ciders into the Westcountry Cider Championships. They swept the board! We are thrilled with these medals, which are a celebration of our efforts to find and rescue the very best apples that make the most delicious cider.”
Sandford Orchards is leading a DEFRA-funded Innovate UK project with Keith Edwards, emeritus professor of crop genetics at Bristol University, to identify and map apple varieties in their ancient orchards and beyond.
By punching a small hole in leaves from individual trees, they are collecting samples for DNA fingerprinting from thousands of apple trees, with the aim of locating, preserving, and propagating unique and threatened varieties. The results of their research will help them save lost apple trees and plan for diversity and climate-resilience in their orchards.
Barny said: “This is beyond exciting. We were hoping we’d uncover something special — we could never have imagined that the results would be so emphatic.
“There has been tragic and generational loss of orchards in the West of England, with glorious varieties quietly vanishing from the landscape, and with them the recipes of centuries of cider makers. Well this stops right now.
“I consider this utterly remarkable result a rebuke from the old orchards — we’ve been neglecting our role as custodians, we’ve forgotten to listen and to look and to taste, and here is the most fabulous evidence of what can be done if we make the effort to understand the huge diversity of fruit we have at our fingertips.”
James Crowden, cider maker and author of Cider Country, was one of the cider judges at the show. He said: “This cider is rich, complex, fruity with depth, and subtlety reminiscent of cider from 50 years ago. It celebrates the rich harvest from old Devon cider apple trees whose names we have forgotten. It’s a blast from the past and a stepping stone into the future!”
