Cider House Rules

We meet a cider-making family who have relied on the same trusted techniques for more than 200 years

- Lawrence Alexander

Somerset’s rich soil and lush climate cry out for apples. Even the legendary Isle of Avalon, believed by some to be Glastonbury, was once known as the Isle of Apples and the county’s most famous product, cider, reaches back at least a thousand years.

Cider was vital to the rural economy. Without a good brew a farmer couldn’t hope to attract a decent workforce. A labourer would be paid four to six pints a day; at harvest time that allowance would double. Cider was even used as currency. By the late 20th century the drink was ‘old-fashioned’. Britain’s orchards were in serious decline. Happily, that situation has reversed and orchards across the land, both community and commercial, are being planted again.

Some, of course, never went away. David and Louisa Sheppy are the sixth generation of Sheppy’s Cider, a 200-year-old family business passed from father to son since at least 1816. Today’s vats may be a little shinier than their ancestors and the cider a little sweeter than the mouth-puckering scrumpy of yesteryear, but the basic fermentation of home-grown apples using natural yeasts is much the same as it would have been two centuries ago.

“We’ve tracked the family back to Congresbury, near Bristol,” says Louisa. At first cider would have been for the farm but gradually it began to be sold too. This didn’t please everyone. “There were two sides of the family, farmers and millers, but at some point the milling side became Methodists,” says Louisa. “Being strictly teetotal, they saw us as the wicked side.” David’s father Richard finally healed the rift in the late 20th century.