The harvest machinery is out in Neil MacDonald’s Somerset orchard three weeks early, and none of what it collects will be drunk. The apples beneath his trees are unripe and already rotting, dropped by stressed trees with no water to spare.
“The trees are stressed without any water, so they’ve just dumped the fruit on the ground to save themselves,” he says. “This should be a 20-tonne orchard. If I get 10 tonnes from it I’ll be grateful.”
MacDonald manages more than 1,000 acres of cider orchards across Somerset and reckons he has lost about half his crop. Kimberly Jones of Honey’s Cider near Bath is worse off, with her 25-year-old orchard producing only a tenth of its normal amount. “It’s gut-wrenching,” she says. Last year’s dry summer left the trees already stressed, so this year most simply did not make fruit.
George Scott, master cider maker at Rich’s Cider near Highbridge, normally produces nearly a million litres a year, but he will not even run the harvester through one of his orchards this season. “We would normally harvest 20-30 tonnes of apples here. There’s so little fruit in here I won’t even put the harvester in. The sheep can have any that drop.” One of his growers, usually good for 200 tonnes, is down to about 30.
There is an irony in the timing: the long hot summer has been excellent for selling cider. “Everyone likes a cold cider on a hot day,” Jones says, “but we are struggling now to grow fruit for next year.”
Tanks are not empty yet, because cider makers hold stock from year to year. The worry is the trees. Two seasons of drought have been followed by mild winters, and the Dabinett variety, the backbone of Somerset’s bittersweet taste, never got the cold snap it needs. Mike Kendon, a climate scientist at the Met Office, said what used to be thought of as extreme weather is increasingly considered normal. The Telegraph reported on Saturday that producers across the country are bracing for their worst year.
Adaptation is already underway. MacDonald is grafting new varieties onto his Dabinett trees and watering newly planted ones, something he would not have bothered with five years ago. Irrigation across hundreds of acres is “just not viable”, he says. If the summers keep coming like this one, the taste of West Country cider will change along with the climate.