THE CIDER AND PERRY INDUSTRY. 



191 



It gave me, I must say, much gratification to find in the 

 letter from which I have just cited the following passage : " The 

 venture originated from the interest awakened by your letters to 

 the Times." In former days both Surrey and Kent were cider- 

 producing counties, and Dr. Beale, who, as I have said, wrote in 

 the seventeenth century, speaks of having tasted cider from both 

 Kent and Essex. In Norfolk cider has been made for genera- 

 tions. In the case, however, of the Kent cider it is admitted that 

 the table fruit from which it is mostly made would be bettered 

 by the admixture of sharper and more astringent vintage fruit ; 

 and I should recommend the Kent cider-makers to plant a good 

 selection of such fruit, and in the meantime to improve their 

 cider, as they already are doing, by the purchase of vintage fruit 

 from the West country until their own newly planted trees begin 

 to bear. In further illustration of the increase of the industry in 

 parts of the country where it has not hitherto formed a branch 

 of farming or of commercial business, I may instance a gentleman 

 in Hertfordshire who has set up a cider-making plant, and that 

 just lately I received a letter from a landowner in Scotland 

 asking me where he could send his bailiff this season to be 

 instructed in the business. I have also received several com- 

 munications from the colonies, some, as in New Zealand, telling 

 me of establishments already in work there, and others, as in 

 several of the Australian colonies, asking for information and 

 instruction. 



My own opinion is that there is room in the trade for the 

 farmer cider-maker and the cider manufacturer. The latter will 

 probably in the future make and supply the bulk of the cider 

 consumed by the general public, who demand, foolishly as I 

 think, that what they drink, be it beer or cider, shall always be 

 uniform in quality ; while the former, if he be, as he should be, 

 instructed in the science of the business, will make the choicer 

 brands from selected sorts of noted merit, which he will dispose 

 of to private customers and locally among those who know and 

 appreciate really good cider. I think the number of these will 

 increase, and that the day may come when prime cider will on 

 the tables of the wealthy displace the commoner and often 

 adulterated sorts of foreign wines, and when country gentlemen, 

 especially in the cider-producing districts, will take a pride, as 

 they evidently did in former days, in always having some good 



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