Uncle Bob a bit pissed?

Countryside Column for 17 October.

Bob is still your uncle for real cider.

In my youth the cider lorry, piled high with wooden barrels, was a common sight round here. On the backboard was painted the legend: “Bob’s Your Uncle”. And Bob Luck Cider was itself legendry – certainly the potent vintage variety needed to be drunk by the thimbleful to avoid instant inebriation.

I visited his farm to collect a barrel of ‘ordinary’ for my 18^th birthday party. It was beautifully bucolic, buried away down meandering lanes. Bob himself was apple-round with a face suggesting he’d sampled too much of his own product over the years. I strapped the barrel on the back of my motorcycle and still remember the hazardous drive home round sharp bends. 

In those days real cider drinking was commonplace, possibly because gassy keg beer was all you could get in most pubs. The Campaign for Real Ale altered all that but, with the revival of cask-conditioned beer, somewhere along the way traditional cider making got left behind. People such as Bob Luck retired or went out of business and ironically what was left were gassy bottled ciders

Now, though, CAMRA is busy promoting real cider and have listed almost two thousand pubs that sell it.  They are also making a documentary about the production process and sent a film crew along to our community orchard apple day the other week. 

This cider revival has been a boon and a blessing to orchards like ours. We are by no means sure what varieties of apples we have, but cider makers like a blend. Picking from ladders up our old tall trees is a time-consuming business (and something of a safety hazard). So, shaking branches and collecting the fruit from the ground is a good deal easier and the occasional bruise no bar if an apple is to go in the press. (Bruises to pickers from apples falling from trees remain a minor danger though!)

It’s surprising just how many local cider-makers are about but, as always, our main problem is transporting the apples to the press. Now, though, a maker with the wonderfully redolent name of Rough Old Wife actually collects them from us – and the proprietor even came along to offer some of last year’s cider for our Apple Day.

It was quite delicious and the taste memory whisked me back across the decades to that birthday party and Bob Luck’s late-lamented beverage.