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| 1. Draught cider and perry |
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We market 40% of our production as draught products sold direct to CAMRA beer and cider festivals across England, and direct to the consumer at food and drink festivals in the Marches.
We supply our draught products to the retail trade at wholesale prices as follows:
- Draught cider @ £2.20/litre (£9.00/gallon) – purchaser to supply 5 gallon tub
- Draught perry @ £2.20/litre (£9.00/gallon) – purchaser to supply 5 gallon tub
- 10 litre ‘bag-in-box’ @ £25.00 (inclusive of packaging)
- 20 litre ‘bag-in-box’ @ £50.00 (inclusive of packaging)
The advantage of the ‘bag-in-box’ is that it’s a double skin food grade plastic bag inside a robust bio-degradable cardboard box with no risk of spoilage.
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| 2. Still bottled cider and perry |
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Each year we market some of our cider and perry as still bottled products in 75cl ‘claret style’ wine bottles with cork closure and foil cap.
The wholesale price of cider/perry in this format is £3.00/75cl bottle
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| 3. ‘Normandy Method’ sparkling cider and perry |
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 This production method was a new venture for us in 2005. It involves the addition of a special enzyme and calcium chloride, which forms a pectin-calcium gel (‘Le chapeau brun’ or ‘brown hat’) on the surface of the freshly pressed juice to absorb the nitrogenous materials. After ten or more days when ‘Le chapeau’ is well formed, the clear juice is racked off to ensure a low nitrogen/vitamin status and a slow fermenting juice, suitable for final racking and bottling at a specific gravity of 10.15 to produce a bottle conditioned medium to medium-dry cider/perry with a slight yeast deposit.
In 2009 we made 1500 litres of our ‘Normandy method’ naturally sparkling perry and just 300 litres of the cider. We milled the fruit and then set them aside to ‘macerate’ for 16 hours, added the enzyme to the tank before filling with raw juice and then added the CaCl2 about 36 hours later. We then pumped it top and bottom to create a continuous circulation for 20 minutes and 10 days later – hey presto! The result is a well formed brown pectin gel (up to 10 cm thick) which is ready when it’s brown and ‘crusty’, so you can then rack off a clear nutrient poor juice from underneath it.
 We expect the results will be stupendous in the Spring, when we will release the finished products for sale. They will be available in a full weight champagne style bottle with mushroom cork and wire closure at a wholesale price of £4.50/75cl bottle (i.e. unchanged from 2008/09).
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| 4. ‘Champagne Method’ bottle fermented perry |
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We made our first ‘Champagne Method’ bottle fermented perry in 2001.
In December 2008 we released 550 75cl bottles of our 2006 bottle fermented ‘champagne’ perry made from the Thorn perry pear. This product had a first fermentation in barrel during autumn/winter 2006/07 and a second in bottle fermentation in 2007/08 prior to remuage and disgorging (champagne method) at Three Choirs Vineyards Ltd in November 2008.
The bottle format is the same as for the ‘Normandy Method’ sparkling cider and perry (as at 3. above) with the addition of a gold foil and the wholesale price is £7.00/75cl bottle.
This product is now sold out but we plan to make another batch with our 2009 vintage which will be ready for release in 2011.
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