In deepest Herefordshire, a small band of aficionados is giving the pear drink a new lease of life
by Alice Lascelles
Financial Times June 14, 2019
The perry pear is an irksome fruit. It is small, hard and sour. Its window of ripeness is fleeting — if you don’t pick it in time, it has a tendency to “blet”, or rot, from the inside out. Its juice spoils easily. And its trees grow painfully slowly. If you plant a perry pear tree, you can easily wait 20 years for any kind of meaningful harvest.
Yet in the right hands, it can produce a drink that is delightful: bright gold, with fine bubbles, precise tannin and thirst-quenching orchard characters that are by turns musky, sharp and sweet. Less boozy than wine and more fragrant than cider, it’s the sort of thing you want to sip while lying on a sun-warmed picnic blanket.
Most commercial “pear ciders” aren’t perry at all — they’re apple ciders pimped with pear juice, syrups or flavourings. Traditional perry, by contrast, is made exclusively from fermented perry pear juice. When you taste proper perry, it’s easy to see how it became the toast of Georgian England. Napoleon is said to have dubbed it the “English champagne”.
Today, perry teeters on the brink of extinction — it’s just too much of a bind for big companies to make. But over the past couple of years, I have got to know a small band of zealots deep in rural Herefordshire who are keeping the flame alive.
Their torchbearer is Tom Oliver of Oliver’s Cider, a genial man-mountain who combines life as an award-winning cidermaker with a job managing The Proclaimers. “Say ‘perry’ to most people and they’ll still think of Babycham, but in its heyday in the 1700s, perry was very highly regarded,” says Oliver, as we drive down a lane bursting with scented may. “It can be brilliant one moment and woeful the next, but when it is right, it is a magnificent celebration of the wonderful subtleness and delicacy of the perry pear.”
It was Oliver who, along with Charles Martell, creator of Stinking Bishop cheese, campaigned for a reappraisal of perry in the 1990s, resulting in the resurrection, and replanting, of perry pear trees across the west of England.
“Perry is unlike anything else,” says Oliver. “It’s about valuing the tree, the landscape and the terroir. It’s not scalable, it’s testing to make on a seasonal basis. It’s a drink that goes against the grain.”
Leaning on a gate, contemplating a 50ft perry pear tree covered in blossom, we taste what Oliver calls his “breakfast perry” — a slightly sweeter “keeved” style that retains more of the pear’s natural sugars. Bottled at a mellow 3.9 per cent abv, it is delicate, honeyed and fruity, with a tickle of bitterness on the finish. Oliver’s drier Fine Perry is also delicious.
There are more than 100 types of perry pear — each one as unique as a wine grape. At the Ross-on-Wye Cider & Perry Company in the Wye Valley, Mike Johnson and his 25-year-old son Albert grow more than 40 different perry pears (as well as more than 100 types of cider apple), which they showcase in a range of blended and single-varietal perries that they sell in their Yew Tree pub.
“This one is made from the Gin Pear,” says Albert, handing me a glass of silver-gold sparkling perry with notes of elderflower, citrus and juniper that remind me of a Sancerre. “And this one is a really rare variety called Flakey Bark — there are only six trees that we know of,” he says, refilling my glass with a deeper-gold perry that’s more autumnal, with flavours of apple and oak.
“Most of the trees that my dad planted 40 years ago were graftings of root stock planted by someone else,” he says. “So, every time you press the pears, you are doing something of immense privilege because someone else has come before you and laid the foundations of your work. It feels like your hands are being guided by the hands of those who came before you.”
Accompanied by Ross-on-Wye’s deputy cidermaker John Edwards — a veteran with dreadlocks that hang way past his knees — we take a walk through the orchards. In one corner, Albert points out their oldest tree, a Holmer perry pear planted in 1825. “Back in the day, a lot of perry pears had nicknames — this one was Startle Cock, because of its diuretic effects.”
At Gregg’s Pit in Herefordshire, James Marsden makes perry from a two-acre cottage orchard that’s 300 years old. The rarest variety in this orchard, which contains 37 varieties of apple and pear, is the eponymous Gregg’s Pit, which records suggest was only ever propagated on one or two adjacent farms. All the fruit is pressed by hand, on site, using an 18th-century press carved from green stone from the nearby Forest of Dean. It is terroir-driven drink-making of the highest order.
Once you make perry’s acquaintance, you start seeing the countryside with new eyes. Most of the really old perry pear trees are dotted about, in the corners of fields, down the ends of gardens, jumbled in, unnoticed, with apple trees, hedgerows and livestock — a legacy of a time when farming was much more polycultural. (While researching this piece, I learnt to my horror that my parents had just chopped down an ancient perry pear tree that was invading their house. I’m pleased to report it’s already sprouting back.)
The scarcity of orchards means many perry producers have to glean their fruit from several sources — their own orchards, as well as those of neighbours, fellow growers and friends.
“When we were offered the chance to pick fruit from an amazing orchard in Dymock in Gloucestershire, we leapt at the chance, even though we had to drive 45 minutes each way for several days,” says Susanna Forbes, one-half of Little Pomona, a tiny cidery in the Malvern Hills. “It was crazy really — but getting to work with trees that were planted when George III was on the throne was incredibly special.” The result? An earthy, barrel-aged pét nat (pétillant naturel), which debuted on the tasting menu at Lee Westcott’s fine-dining restaurant Pensons.
There are probably no more than 30 perry producers in the whole of England — most are in Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. Volumes are so low that most of what they produce never makes it across county lines. Yet the Fine Cider Co is trying to change all that. Founded in 2014 by 30-year-old Felix Nash, this esoteric drinks merchant has helped put real perry and cider on the lists of Michelin-starred restaurants, including St John, Lyle’s and the Clove Club.
I ask Nash what drew him to this world in the first place — and he replies: “It restores your faith in humanity.”
Tasting box
Oliver’s Fine Perry — Keeved #3
3.9% abv
Sun-kissed orchard fruit, a touch of honey and a fine, astringent finish.
£7.40/75cl from oliversciderandperry.co.uk
Newton Court Black Mountain
4.2%
Slightly hazy, silver-gold perry with bright citrus and a prosecco-like fizz.
£8/75cl from newtoncourtcider.com
Ross-on-Wye Gin Pear Perry
6.8%
A fresh, quite mineral perry that will appeal to drinkers of dry white wine.
£9/75cl from rosscider.com (tel: 01989 562 815)
Gregg’s Pit Perry 2015
8.5%
Full-flavoured and nutty, with lots of tawny fruit and an appetising bite.
£15.50/75cl from www.greggs-pit.co.uk
Once Upon a Tree Priggles Perry
6%
A tangy, medium-dry still perry made with the honeyed Blakeney Red.
£5.45/75cl from shop.haygrove-evolution.com
And from Normandy . . . Poiré Granit Eric Bordelet 2016
4.5%
Superlative French perry from the former head sommelier of the Michelin three-star Arpège in Paris.
£18.50/75cl from buonvino.co.uk
Alice Lascelles is Fortnum & Mason Drinks Writer of the Year 2019. She writes The Goblet drinks column for FT How To Spend It. Follow Alice on Twitter @alicelascelles and Instagram @alicelascelles. Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first.
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