Orchard People

[00:00:00] Welcome to Perry Country
Susan: Welcome to the Orchard People podcast. For this episode, I visit a very special place.
It's Gloucestershire in the United Kingdom.
Gloucestershire is apple country, and
apples grow really well there,
but pears grow really well there, too.
For this episode, I'm going to explore a little bit more about perry making.
What are perry pears, why it might be good for you to grow them, and how to make perry cider.
My guest on the show today is Phil Kester of the volunteer group 99 Pines, and we're gonna find out a lot about perry making in this region and why this tradition is worth preserving.

[00:00:44] Meet Phil and 99 Pines
Phil: My name's Phil Kester, and my full-time job is a civil servant in Gloucestershire in the UK.
Susan: Oh, really? So this is just for fun. Tell me what you do for 99 Pines.
Phil: 99 Pines is a community interest company and I manage the company. Very, small. A bunch of volunteers, and we pick and harvest rare varieties of perry pear from the Gloucestershire region and make perry.
Susan: So where are we today?
Phil: So we're in the village of Hartpury, in Gloucestershire in the UK.
Susan: And so what is this center? Why are there perry pears planted here?
[00:01:18] Perry Pear History
Phil: A few hundred years ago, this was a prolific perry making, country. the soil is just right.
Every farm in this area would've had a perry pear and some cider trees, apple trees back in the 17th and 18th century.
So this goes back to the Napoleonic Wars when we couldn't get a hold of wine from France, so they made perry in this area, which is a good substitute,
and each farm had a different variety or certain varieties in certain regions, like villages
And over the years there was about, I reckon, over 100, 120 different varieties. Over the last, few decades, these were all being lost. There's no commercial value in perry, so a lot of these farms were
pulling out all these old giant pear trees and using them for agriculture or something else.
30 years ago, there was a chap called Charles Martell. You may have heard of Stinking Bishop cheese. He realized this was happening.
He cataloged all these lost, all these perry pears, over 100 different varieties, and he worked with
the Three Counties Showground in Malvern and they allowed him to plant cuttings from all of these different rare varieties, and there is a national perry collection there at Malvern.
And here, where you are here, in 2007, a chap called Jim Chapman
got some National Lottery money and gifted some land that he had as part of Hartpury Heritage Trust, and set up a National Perry Pear Centre with a second duplicate collection, which is where we are now.
[00:02:53] Why Perry Is Hard
Susan: You said there is no money in perry pear making.
Phil: Yeah.
Susan: Why not?
Phil: Yeah, it, just doesn't make any commercial sense.
It's harder than cider for a number of different reasons.
Over 100 different varieties, that's fine
but some of the varieties may be on the tree and ripe on Wednesday
and rotten on Saturday. Some varieties you literally have to be camped under the tree to know when to pick it. other things about it is it's very susceptible to bacteria, more than cider, so you have to be super careful, but you can get over that. blending, it doesn't like being blended after fermentation. So a cider you can ferment down to nothing, and then you can blend with other different varieties to make the perfect blend.
There are very few perry makers. Most are cider makers that do a bit of perry on the side.
partly because it's challenging, partly because there aren't many perry trees around, so there's far more cider trees than perry trees.
Susan: So the 99 Pines volunteers must be a hardy bunch because- Yeah ... they're camping under the trees, right?
Phil: Yep.
Susan: Waiting for everything to go ripe.
[00:03:56] Volunteer Harvest Days
Susan: And so what are they doing other than harvesting?
Phil: What we have is we have a two-week main harvest season, and we basically say to people, "If you want to come down and help us, come down and help us for the two-week period." So we have an investment company coming down in a few days sending 30 people down.
Some individuals, like we have here today. So some days smaller groups, some days bigger groups.
So in the morning they'll turn up around 9:00. We'll have a bit of a chat, have a brew. We go out either here or to another local orchard.
Some of the orchards are 350 years old, which I found, King Henry VIII, and we're picking the fruit from these trees. It's just outstanding.
We'll do that in the morning, then we'll have a barbecue, bit of a chat over lunch. And then in the afternoon we'll probably get the kit out, and we'll probably do the scratting and the pressing and turn it into juice.
Susan: Amazing. That sounds wonderful. Finally something coming to mind.
[00:04:48] The 99 Pines Legend
Susan: Why is it called 99 Pines?
Phil: Good question. So, there are 99 pine trees, legend has it, on the top of May Hill, which is a hill locally with a lot of pine trees on the top. You can see it for miles around. legend has it that you can't grow 100 on it. You can only grow 99, and that is the epicenter of English perry across Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and Herefordshire.
The real reason behind it is that there used to be a family of giants that lived on the top of May Hill, and the king giant was brought a perry pear from one of his underlings and was told it was the secret for eternal life. And before he was told, "You have to make it into juice," he took a bite out of it, and he spat the pips out across the three counties, and that is the real reason why May Hill is the epicenter of English pear.
Susan: I'm so glad you told me the real reason.
[00:05:38] How to Harvest Pears
Susan: So this morning I'm going to be doing some harvesting.
Phil: Yep.
Susan: So how do we harvest the perry pears?
Phil: We're quite lucky 'cause this orchard is in rows so it's fairly easy pickings.
We'll be going around, sometimes hands and knees, picking up the fruit, making sure it's not been eaten by the deer that's around here. The ones that you can't get off the floor,
then we'll be using an extendable pole called a panking pole. They used to be huge meters-long wooden poles, but now they're metal extendable poles with hooks on the end.
Getting them up into the trees, shaking the trees, and then putting a tarpaulin down, and then picking off the tarpaulin. That's basically the picking. Then this afternoon, we'll be getting involved in the pressing.
Susan: Now, if I see that some of the pears are, I don't know, diseased, or rotting, or have bugs, or whatever, do we still throw them in the bin?
Phil: Yeah, throw them away.
Susan: Throw those away.
Phil: Yeah.
Susan: And so once we collect these pears, where are we putting them?
Phil: We're gonna put them into crates. So pick them in buckets, then stack them up into crates.
We've got a little tractor here in the orchard. We'll take that back to the center.
We'll work out whether they're ripe or whether they're not ripe, and if they're ripe, we will then press them this afternoon.
Susan: Fantastic. I am so excited. I can do this. Can I do this? I think so.
[00:06:52] Rare Varieties and Names
Susan: Oh, before we continue on, I just wanna know, is there a certain cultivar of pears that we're picking today?
Phil: There are a number of different varieties we're gonna pick today.
So we have a variety called
Beetroot Wick Court Alex, which is from somewhere called Wick Court. It's red, and if you cut it open inside, the flesh is like beetroot, so it's an amazing color.
We're picking something called Turner's Barn.
We're picking something called Hendre Huffcap as well. Don't ask me the origin of that one. So some really amazing names. We're gonna be picking quite a few different rare varieties today.
Susan: Any funny names, by the way?
Phil: Yes. Merrylegs is one of my favorites.
Harley Gum is one of my favorites, which is, some people say is a mispronunciation of the village of Arlingham.
Dead Boy is another variety. May have be something to do with the heavy pears falling on someone's head. Who knows?
[00:07:48] Mark on Ripeness
Susan: Phil's right-hand man is volunteer Mark Jordan. And for Mark, this project is about preserving rare pear varieties,
but it's also about working with fantastic people.
Mark: I'm Mark Jordan. I'm as Phil rather kindly has named me as the chief piner because we are part of 99 Pines community project. We try to help propagate and save some of the rarer varieties. At some point in the future, we're hoping to graft and preserve some of the rarer species.
Susan: Today, we're harvesting and I'm baffled a little bit. How do you know when a pear is ripe? And how do you know that it's good to keep and when you should throw it away?
Mark: When the fruit is on the floor, so therefore it's dropped off the tree, that tells us it's going to be ripe or near as.
We can always pick it, take it back to the site, and let it sit for a couple of days perhaps. You can bite into it, I wouldn't recommend you do it too often, and get some idea.
The ones we do at the moment,
the pear ripens from the inside out, so it's what's called bletting, so ripening from the inside, and they actually taste quite sweet, these particular ones. Then it's just a question of test and Phil's experience. He's been doing it for 10 years now,
so he can look at the pear, once we've scratted it, which means chopped it all up. Sometimes we'll keep it in cases for a couple of days, and then we'll press it. So it
matures a bit where the oxygen gets to the fruit that's been chopped up, adds a little certain something to it.
It's not a science. It's an art, and Phil has that.
Susan: I saw you shaking the tree. Tell me a little bit about that process? What it involves?
Mark: It's called panking. And the pole that we use is basically a big old stick with a hook on the end of it, which we then tug at the tree, and if they're ready to fall, we encourage them down. Sometimes if you're a bit too vigorous you can break branches, which is not ideal.
Susan: So you're catching them on the tarp.
Mark: It just saves a lot of effort scrabbling around on your knees.
'Cause most of the time I'm like this, picking up stuff that's already on the ground, popping them into a bucket. And when you're a gentleman of my age... your knees, my knees at least, I can't scamper around like I used to. As regards what makes the grade, if you like, it's not hard and fast.
Something that's nice and whole is fine. There might be others that have fallen off partially rotted or been nibbled by an animal already. That's rotting from the inside, you see there. Look, nice and ripe, so I should get plenty of good juice out of that.
Susan: So why do you do this? Why do you like to do this?
Mark: I do like perry, but that's not the main reason I do it. It's working with people. On a day like this, better than sitting in the office, isn't it? Typing. So yeah, very lucky we are to have this site. And the people that come are great. Lots of locals, people from far and wide, like yourselves, come and discover us, and then start to understand what perry's all about.
[00:11:03] Day Two New Orchard
Susan: So this is day two of Perry Pear harvesting and pressing. We're in a different orchard, and I'm gonna ask Phil to tell me where we are, and it's absolutely delightful here. The trees are older and very beautiful. So let's hear more about this orchard and how the trees are different.
Phil: So this orchard, I found a couple of years ago. It's a beautiful orchard in a village called Gorsley
just across the border from
Gloucestershire into Herefordshire. A beautiful quiet spot. We've got a few prominent varieties. Probably a couple of hundred years old.
Probably the most favorite variety is called
Gin pear. It's beautiful.
It's got a taste of juniper when you bite into it, so why it's called Gin pear.
There is also beautiful Blakeney Red trees with huge branches that reach up to the sky, and there's a variety here called Pint. Fairly small tree.
And another variety here called Thorn, which is an early variety, which we've now missed.
Susan: So we are going to continue harvesting.
Phil: Yeah.
[00:12:08] From Scrat to Ferment
Susan: Once the harvest is done, you bring these beautiful pears back to the center. What happens next? I see you are being very specific about keeping the varieties separate.
You're not mixing them together. So tell me where we go from here.
Phil: I'm in that journey at the moment where I am understanding what all these base varieties taste like. Some of them we know, like Blakeney Red's quite a common variety. Other varieties, not so much. So we're seeing the quality of those and seeing if there's a good standard on them on their own.
Yesterday, we picked some. We then milled them, so we scratted them into chopped bits.
And we left them overnight,
and that's called macerating.
Susan: Today, what happens next? Do we then juice them? Is that the next step?
Phil: We will juice it today, put them into fermenters.
Susan: How long does it take until the perry is ready?
Phil: Probably early in the new year we may siphon it off into a new container, 'cause by that time it will have done its initial fermentation.
So we would take it off the yeast deposits, siphon it into a new container, and then we will leave it until it stops fermenting.
[00:13:14] Bottling Charity and Why
Susan: Let's go to the last step. Your product is ready. what do you do with it? I know you guys have your bar.
Phil: Yeah.
Susan: In the middle of nowhere.
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
Susan: In the Perry Pear Centre.
Phil: From here we'll probably make a larger batch for the bar.
People turn up. We're open every other weekend, every other Saturday from Easter through till now, through to harvest season.
Other things we do with it is we will bottle it. Sell them at local fairs, local events or online through a particular bottle shop that we associate ourselves with.
Susan: And the money goes to?
Phil: So the people we pick from in big orchards like this will nominate a charity. Then at the end of our financial year in the UK, we will empty the bank account and we will buy some new equipment, we will support Hartpury Heritage Trust where the orchard center is. And then at the moment, we support two charities. A mental health charity in the Forest of Dean for teenagers, and then a hospice, St Richard's Hospice, in Worcestershire.
Susan: Why go to all this effort? What's so great about perry that you should work so hard?
Phil: Because it's an English secret. It's the same as wine, it's the same as cider. It's really subtle, it's really light, but it's still got some of those characteristics that cider and wine has,
like Babycham.
It was a drink that was made in the 1970s. It was the first advert for alcohol on British TV.
And it's really light. It's sparkling. It's like Prosecco. There are other varieties where you've got high tannins in there, so it can be quite a bold, tanniny drink
that goes with red meat or red steak or a Sunday dinner in the UK.
You can't find it in the supermarket, so it's unique. It's special. It's something worth hunting out.
[00:14:49] Final Reflections
Susan: Harvesting perry pears and making perry was such a wonderful experience for me.
It made me think about how easily traditions like this can disappear if people don't make the effort to keep them going.
And in Gloucestershire, that's exactly what Phil, Mark, and the other volunteers are doing. One perry pear tree at a time.