Thriving future for monks’ brewing heritage

The way Cameron Smith tells it, Ampleforth began producing cider by accident.

For decades most of the fruit grown on the famous Benedictine abbey’s 600 apple trees was wasted. There were all these trees surrounding the picturesque abbey on the southern slopes of the North York Moors.

Some of them may have been those originally planted by the monks who set up the community back in 1802, but more likely they were left from a reorganisation of the orchard known to have taken place a century later. Whatever the trees’ age, though, one thing was not in doubt. Every year they were growing around ten tonnes of fruit, most of which was left to rot on the ground.

“Some of the apples were taken by staff and students at the college but most of them became windfalls. By around the year 2000 it was pretty clear that something had to be done.”

When a new monk, Father Rainer Verborg, arrived at Ampleforth after spending a year’s noviceship in Germany he was given the job of doing something with the apples and rejuvenating what had become a badly maintained orchard. No one envisaged that a decade later it would lead to Ampleforth’s coat of arms appearing in supermarkets. An Ampleforth-branded beer has also been introduced, using a recipe said to date from the 16th century, but it is brewed at Hebden Bridge.

When Father Rainer retired from Ampleforth a few years ago Cameron took over management of the orchard and apple press and developed the business.

The original cider made by Father Rainer was a fairly crude affair with a somewhat farmyard-like aftertaste, Cameron admits. Many of the trees were getting on for a century old, and Father Rainer used whatever apples that happened to be available rather than those that necessarily created the best cider.

Now, more thought is given to the balance of juice from different apple varieties. As a result, in addition to the original cloudy cider with an alcohol volume of 8.3 per cent – strong compared to most ciders – a new filtered and slightly carbonated cider of 6.5 per cent is being produced to cater for the tastes of modern cider drinkers.

There is also an Ampleforth cider brandy, made in Somerset from juice pressed at the abbey.

So successful have the rejuvenated orchards and the recently modernised cider press been that the current output of 25,000 litres is being doubled, much of it already pledged to one of Britain’s biggest supermarket chains, and the abbey can now claim to be England’s most northerly commercial orchard.

The main reason for Ampleforth’s accidental success as a cider producer, says Cameron, can be summed up in one word: Magners. Over the last decade a huge advertising campaign by Magners Irish Cider has made cider fashionable with young people in bars and clubs, usually served in a glass filled with ice cubes.

“There is no doubt that the company’s marketing has had a very big effect on driving up demand for all ciders in this country,” Cameron says. “Thankfully, it’s a drink that is more profitable than beer because the duty on it leaves more in the pocket of the producer.”

There are now around 2,000 trees at the abbey and hundreds more will be planted next year. In what will be the biggest reorganisation of the orchards at Ampleforth since early Edwardian times some trees will be removed because their apples are not suitable for cider or they do not grow well in Yorkshire.

Cameron has become an expert on apple growing. People think the best cider growing conditions are in places like Kent or the Vale of Evesham, he says, because they get an hour more daylight and probably three or four weeks a year of better weather at the start and end of the season.

“But as long as you use the right apples then you’ll get good crops. Here at Ampleforth we have some that might not produce big apples but what we do get is good flavour, a much nicer fruit. Further south, they may have all that sunshine but it blows up the apples like balloons and there’s often a lot less flavour in them.”

One variety that flourishes at the abbey is the Danish ‘Ingrid Marie’, thought to do well there because Denmark is roughly on the same latitude. Another variety, the Green Balsam, is native to Yorkshire and one of Cameron’s favourites. “It’s a smaller apple but well acclimatised to our climate. Even in the bad growing conditions last year we still got tonnes off the trees.”

Also grown is Katy, a popular variety with cider makers, which produces a deep red juice and has a sweetness which helps balance the sharper, drier varieties. Cameron has pressed around 3,000 litres of its juice and is thinking about introducing Katy as a single variety cider.

To ramp up production further a grower at Bedale has planted traditional cider apple varieties for Cameron, including the popular Dabinett cider apple. The trees will start bearing fruit in a couple of years, enabling the abbey to increase its volume of cider to 50,000 litres a year and beyond.

Picking lasts until mid-November, with pressing sometimes put on hold when there’s a fine day and all hands are needed to harvest the crop. Visitors often volunteer to help the monks working at the cider mill.

Cameron himself is not the biggest cider fan. “I like a cold glass on a warm summer’s day but I’m more a pint of bitter man. I think because I’m smelling and checking cider all day I get a bit bored with it. It’s a bit like someone who works at a Cadbury’s factory not wanting to eat chocolate.”

A long-standing thirst for cider

Once advertised as a cure for gout and other illnesses, cider has been made for so long that one of its earliest written references can be found in the Bible – the Wycliffe ‘Cider’ Bible printed in the early 15th century.

According to the National Association of Cider Makers, the Bible gets its name from the translation of the verse, ‘For he (John the Baptist) shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink...’. The Cider Bible uses the word ‘cider’ (sidir) for strong drink and it can be viewed today in Hereford Cathedral.