CIDER AND PERRY FRUIT. 



565 



CIDER AND PERKY FRUIT. 



By B. T. P. Barker, M.A., Director of the National Fruit and 

 Cider Institute. 



(Substance of Lecture read October 11, 1910.) 



The present condition of a typical cider or perry orchard in the "West 

 of England reflects in striking fashion the lack of interest and care 

 taken in orchard cultivation during the greater part of last century. 

 At the beginning of the century cider was still held in high esteem; 

 but various causes were responsible for the decline in vogue of the 

 beverage, with the result that the orchards had in most cases a minimum 

 of attention bestowed upon them. It was not until about twenty-five 

 years ago that renewed interest began to be taken in them. The 

 publication of the Herefordshire Pomona by Dr. Hogg and Graves 

 Bull practically marks the beginning of modern effort to raise the 

 orchards to a better standard by those interested in the cider industry. 



In these old vintage orchards not only are evidences of past neglect 

 shown in the moss- and lichen-covered trees, their dense, entangled, 

 unpruned character, and their pest-ridden condition, but also in the 

 hopeless and infinite variety of different kinds of apples and pears. 

 In a five-acre orchard there may be as many as from fifty to a hundred 

 different varieties to be found ; and usually an appreciable percentage 

 of these are peculiar to the orchard and not found elsewhere. This 

 feature is doubtless due to the fact that seedling stocks used to 'be 

 planted with the intention of working selected varieties upon them 

 in due course; but through neglect or some other cause the grafting 

 was omitted, and the young stocks were allowed to develop untouched. 

 Naturally, with such miscellaneous material to work with, the modern 

 cider-maker is seriously handicapped in any endeavour to produce a 

 uniform type of cider or perry. He can neither obtain a sufficient 

 quantity of fruit of selected varieties, nor can he possibly hope to 

 gain the knowledge of the characters of all the individual varieties with 

 which he is compelled to deal, which is necessary for them to be utilized 

 to the best advantage. 



The history of existing vintage orchards easily explains why vintage 

 fruit is so commonly looked upon as inferior and hardly worthy of 

 attention. As a matter of fact, the majority of varieties used for cider- 

 and perry-making have no better claim to be considered as vintage 

 fruit than the fact that they are worthless for other purposes and are 

 therefore brought to the press rather than wasted. The characteristic 

 features of a true vintage apple or pear are as strongly marked as those 

 of a standard table variety. They are mainly chemical in character, 

 and will be considered in due course. There are, however, certain 



