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New Blackmore Vale, October 1, 2021
blackmorevale.net
Food & Drink
One-man band Oliver top of the crops By Steve Keenan newsdesk@ blackmorevale.net
With apple harvest beginning, it must give a cider producer that little extra juice to start picking when 1,000 people have just voted yours to be the best in show. The show was the Bath and West, where visitors paid £1 to blind taste six selected ciders and Oliver Dowding’s medium still cider stole the show. To pick up the People’s Choice award was a huge fillip for Oliver, who thinks his cider was selected for the taste-off as his medium won him his first Gold award at the Mid-Somerset show in August. “I still don’t know whose ciders I was up against at Bath and West,” says Oliver. “But I am ten times happier to know that 1,000 people chose mine rather than having two judges perceiving to be what are great ciders.” It’s an amazing accolade for somebody who only began dabbling in cider from his base in Shepton Montague five years ago. He was born in the village, ironically in Orchard House, and has never lived anywhere else. But Oliver was a dairy farmer until divorce forced him to sell his farm and herd in 2006. He kept 80 acres and rented 230 more and turned to arable farming. But the land included 10 acres of orchards and in 2016, he began making a little cider in a personal way, just 150 litres a year. “I thought there might be an opportunity here,” he said, and planted 500 more trees, a mix of eaters, cookers and cider apples. He also began buying in more eater apples, including
CORE SKILLS: Oliver Dowding at Shepton Montague. Inset: Some of his award-winning ciders
from the National Trust’s Montacute House orchards last year when the café shut in the pandemic and was unable to make use of them. The first of his planted trees are now starting to produce fruit in addition to the original 10 acres. “Right now, 20% of the juice comes
produces dry and medium Dowding’s cider, both still and carbonated, as well as apple juice. He is effectively a one-man band, with marketing help from his partner Jane and casual labourers for picking, who are becoming more difficult to find.
from here and 80% is brought in. I’m very choosy where that comes from and, as the years go by, that proportion will change.” Oliver – brother of no-dig advocate Charles Dowding –
The picking begins this month and is all done by hand, hard work but which at least allows for quality control from the off. The eaters get picked first for juice and the cider apples
follow in November. In terms of volume, he now sells more apple juice than cider – partly because tax laws mean small cider producers stay under 7,000 litres capacity to avoid punitive taxation. But he is still expanding, with a big investment in equipment to produce the juice quicker and with better consistency. A new line comes soon – Breakfast Cider, which is low alcohol juice (1.2%) and what the French enjoy with a coffee and croissant. Meanwhile, he plans a marquee to host events and possibly a shepherd hut or two in the orchard. And will continue to sell at festivals and events, where his three- and five-litre cider pouches are popular. “It is a slog and anyone who tells you different is lying,” he says. “But I am convinced, as with the award, that we are doing the right things that people want. And I am also perfectly content with what I am doing.”
