Cox <strong>and</strong> RoCks
There are few things that sum up Engl<strong>and</strong> at its bucolic best more than a late summer picnic in an orchard: hunks of cheese, thick slabs of ham, crusty bread, a few pickles, <strong>and</strong> a big, cool stone flagon of cider, made, perhaps, with the previous year’s fruit from the orchard itself. Rustic bliss: on a fine day, anyway. You can almost hear the Morris men’s bells jangling in the distance. Everyone knows what cider is. It’s fermented apple juice, isn’t it? Well, up to a point: for commercially produced cider, the actual juice content can be as low as a paltry 35%. The rest can be made up with anything fermentable, <strong>and</strong> even the juice can actually be imported apple concentrate. The “cider” can then be carbonated, pasteurised <strong>and</strong> micro-filtered before it reaches the bottle or the cask: remember that next time you turn on the TV <strong>and</strong> see ravenhaired colleens cavorting through orchards in traditional dress, advertising “authentic” cider. Real cider – or “craft cider”, as it is often known – is a very different beast. At its simplest, it is just milled apples, pressed to extract their juice in early autumn <strong>and</strong> left in barrels somewhere cool for the winter: the wild yeasts on the skins of the apples ferment the sugars, producing alcohol, which in turn stops the cider from freezing in all but the harshest of winters. Come springtime, it is dry, strong, still <strong>and</strong> ready to drink. This style of cider is something of an acquired taste. It can be mouth-puckeringly dry, <strong>and</strong> it can also have a distinct smell of vinegar. Some craft cidermakers, including Charlie Newman <strong>and</strong> l<strong>and</strong>lord Kevin Hunt of the Square <strong>and</strong> Compass in Dorset, prefer to use a cultivated yeast, which controls the fermentation more accurately than its wilder cousins, producing a more reliable brew. The Square <strong>and</strong> Compass sits in the little village of Worth Maltravers, a few miles west along the Jurassic Coast from Swanage. They have been making <strong>and</strong> selling their own cider for the last six years, <strong>and</strong> were awarded the prestigious title of “Real Cider Pub of the Year” by CAMRA in 2008. “We sell three ‘expressions’ of cider,” explains Kevin, “Dry, medium <strong>and</strong> sweet. In the first year they have a bit of cloudiness in them, then they get clearer as they age. Charlie uses a mixture of traditional cider apples <strong>and</strong> eating apples. We made 14,000 litres last year.” All of which is sold in the pub, where cider is starting to approach 50% of all the pints pulled. “We sell other ciders as well: Westons, from Herefordshire, Hecks, from Street in Somerset, <strong>and</strong> Cider By Rosie, made by Rose Grant in Mid Dorset. “We do have Stowford Press as well: it’s our only fizzy cider. I’m not here to upset the customers: anyway, often people will move from lager to the Stowford Press <strong>and</strong> then they’ll try a half of real cider. Lager consumption has dropped off big time.” You can find a fine pint of cider at the Square <strong>and</strong> Compass any time of year, but perhaps the best time to visit is on the first Saturday in November (the 3rd this year) when the pub hosts its annual Cider Festival. The festival features not only a wide range of local craft ciders, but there is freshly pressed apple juice, some very toothsome sausages, lessons in identifying different varieties of apples, <strong>and</strong> live music later in the evening. The Square <strong>and</strong> Compass also boasts another attraction, unusual (if not unique) for a pub: it has a small museum dedicated to fossils. The Jurassic Coast – the 95-mile stretch of coastline from Orcombe Bay, near Exmouth, in East Devon, to Old Harry Rocks, not far from the Square <strong>and</strong> Compass – is a World Heritage Site, <strong>and</strong> hugely popular both with walkers on the South West Coastal Park <strong>and</strong> with amateur paleontologists. The area was home to the 19th-century fossil hunter, Mary Anning, who famously discovered a fossil of an entire ichthyosaur: she was just 12-years-old at the time. Visitors these days may not be so fortunate, but there are plenty of ammonites to be found, as well as many other relics of prehistoric life. <strong>Lime</strong>wire 05 For a wealth of information about the Jurassic Coast, <strong>and</strong> a comprehensive listing of organised walks (from easy to strenuous), talks, visitor centres <strong>and</strong> museums, visit the excellent www.jurassiccoast.com. Or you can simply admire the collection at the Square <strong>and</strong> Compass over a pint or two of craft cider. Not that the Square <strong>and</strong> Compass is the only place to drink proper cider in Hampshire or Dorset: far from it. The exhaustive website www.ukcider.co.uk lists every pub selling cider in the two counties, as well as upcoming festivals: real enthusiasts might try New Forest Cider’s annual steam-pressing weekend, on the 13th <strong>and</strong> 14th of October. The company’s “Workman” cider press is, so they claim, the only steam-driven press in Britain that is still working. CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, are also fans of real cider: most of their beer festivals feature several ciders as well as excellent local beers. Both the South Hampshire branch (www.shantscamra.org.uk) <strong>and</strong> the West Dorset branch (www.camrawdorset.org. uk) have plenty of information on cider stockists <strong>and</strong> festivals: you could try the beer <strong>and</strong> cider festival at the Gaggle of Geese in Buckl<strong>and</strong> Newton, Dorset, on 14th September (01300 345 249), where you might pick up a goose for a snip at their charity poultry auction. Whether you are a dedicated rambler, a music fan, a fossil fiend, or just someone keen to investigate in a practical fashion the happy marriage of the fermented apple <strong>and</strong> the cooked pig, the historic Jurassic Coast <strong>and</strong> its pub-strewn hinterl<strong>and</strong> has much to offer, <strong>and</strong> much to enjoy. And the world seems much rosier after a pint of proper cider.
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