Title: Thatchers Then & Now: The Story Of A Cidermaking Family
Author: James Russell & Neil Phillips
Year: 2014
Format: Hardback
Page Count: 139
Price new: £17.21 (Amazon)*
*accurate at the time of posting
Description: (TLDR)
3 sections 'Thatchers Story' 'Twenty-first century cider company' and 'Apples & Orchards'
Lots of really nice photographs, many of them full page.
On the back of the book it says:
There have been Thatchers in northern Somerset since at least 1806 and we know that by 1878 Benjamin Thatcher of Upper Langford was advertising his Prime new cider at 30 shillings per hogshead.
James Russell traces the history of Thatchers cidermaking from those beginnings to the present day. The modern generation of Thatchers have established themselves as leading family cidermakers with a reputation for producing a wide range of ciders to the highest quality and for breaking new ground in the development of orchards while caring for the land that produces the finest cider apples in the world
Photographer Neil Phillips has been capturing the images of Thatchers cidermaking for many years and this book is a showcase of his fantastic pictures as he documents the orchard and cidermaking year, the traditions and innovations, and goes behind the scenes at Myrtle Farm, Sandford to produce this unique body of work.
Title: Bulmer's Pomona
Author: see below
Year: 1987
Format: Hardback
Page Count: 72
Price new: £60.00 from the Hereford Cider Museum
(an unrealistically expensive price quoted on Amazon)
Description: (TLDR)
Watercolours by Caroline Todhunter
Descriptions of the apples by Ray Williams
Line Drawings by Rodney Shackell
Commissioned by Bulmer's to mark their centenary
35 exquisitely painted plates each of one apple variety with a line drawing and description on the facing page.
My copy is staying in it's packing box so I don't get any greasy/dirty fingerprints on it or spill any cider or anything else on it
On the back of the book it says:
Nothing
Title: The History and Virtues of Cyder
Author: R.K. French
Year: 1982
Format: Paperback 2010 /Hardback 1982
Page Count: 191
Price new: £3.57 (Amazon)*
Price used: £7.27 (Amazon)*
*accurate at the time of posting
Description: (TLDR)
I've just started reading this book, written over 30 years ago it's often quoted in more recent books. It goes in detail into the history and production of cyder (what we would label real cider today) and calls for resurgence of cyder production which we now have.
On the back of the book it says:
'This book encapsulates all that has been lost in the cider world over the last 200 years, but having said that, over the last twenty five years, there has been a strong and diverse renaissance in cidermaking across the country, from Land's End to Norfolk from Start Point to the Black Isle. I am sure that Roger French would be heartened by the way in which his book has triggered not only in the making of Real Cyder once again but a new and healthy respect for it's place in our national psyche.'
James Crowden
'This book describes the rise and fall of cyder and sets out in practical detail the traditional techniques for making it.
We are all familiar pastuerized, bland and carbon-dioxide-injected cider, but cyder is a living wine of some subtlety, matured in cask and bottled in the manner of champagne. Cyder disappeared from England in the nineteenth century, yet at it's height in the seventeenth century cyder was often preferred to good French white wine and there was much discussion on how cyder should best be made.
Today cyder is having a renaissance. The reader is taken through all the necessary stages from planting the tree, gathering the fruit, pressing and fermentation to laying down the vintage. The book also includes food and drink recipes for when you have made your cyder.'
