TL;DR spoilers – my book about perry is being published next year by CAMRA Books. In October there will be a kickstarter campaign, and you can sign up for all updates right here.

It is time I explained why I have written pretty much nothing on Cider Review for the last couple of months.

It is partly because I spend all my time every day doing my actual job of writing from 9-5 about drinks on the same laptop and at the same desk as I do my Cider Review bits in the evening and early morning, and sometimes it’s hard to face another few hours of doing similar stuff.

It is also partly because I’ve spent pretty much every evening of the last month stomping around Reading Abbey Ruins dressed like this:

But mainly it is because I have also been writing the book about perry which I’ve kept on mentioning … and, almost unbelievably – to me, anyway – it looks like it might actually be published.

As I’ve said a few times in these pages, CAMRA’s approach to cider and perry over the last few years has made them, without any shadow of a doubt, the most important and dynamic champion of these drinks in the UK.

So when I determined that I wanted to write a book about perry; that it was increasingly absurd that a book about perry – a proper guide for the curious drinker, rather than a manual for the pomologist or grower – didn’t already exist, it was to CAMRA Books that I made my pitch.

A few months of back and forth, figuring out ideas, approaches, marketing and so on later, we have hatched our plans, and if all goes according to them, the book – whose title is still not finalised, ‘Something Something Guide Perry CAMRA Drinkers Book Something’ are some of the words that will probably be involved – will be published in May next year.

There is a caveat.

Despite its demonstrable wonderfulness, even by comparison with cider perry is a niche. There is a reason it has historically been confined to a sole chapter within cider books, and I still can’t quite believe I’ve been lucky enough to find a publisher. Though I’ve every confidence in the project, it is brave of CAMRA Books to take it on, and a statement of CAMRA’s broader intent to be a force for change in the fortunes of aspirational cider and perry.

But publishing is a business, and cider and perry’s audiences are a lot smaller than CAMRA’s core audience of beer drinkers. So, as with Gabe Cook’s marvellous Modern British Cider, there is going to be a proof of concept in the form of a kickstarter campaign in October.

CAMRA are very serious about this. We’re still working out exactly the form that the kickstarter will take, but the organisation is repurposing its usual October Cider Month as Perry Month. There’ll be events, talks, tastings, discussions – a true celebration of the fermented pear. Our own designated Perry Month on Cider Review – the traditional September – will be taking place too, and I hope we’ll be able to match last year’s daily content and record breaking numbers.

Researching and writing this book has been a revelation. I thought I knew the drink pretty well when I started; I knew it was an epic story – and, importantly, a global story – of centuries-old trees; of an astonishingly difficult drink to make that in the right hands yields magic; of pears pigs won’t eat that sometimes make the best perry of all and pears so rare you can count their mature trees on your finger; of Austria and France and Wales and the Three Counties; of flavour and food matching and full juice. I knew that you can’t have a perry book without mentioning Babycham.

But I could never have told you then that a book about fermented pear juice would also be a book about bootleggers, fascists and naval battles. I didn’t expect to discover that perry was once bigger than lager in Bavaria or that nursery orchards in 1820s New York were selling Taynton Squash. I didn’t expect to discover any evidence for the ‘Napoleon said it was the champagne of the English’ claim, and I didn’t because he almost certainly didn’t*, but I did come across an old Parisian treatise comparing English (and Swiss, and German) perry to champagne that was even more exciting.

I have been helped by a huge number of people who have helped me to record the flavours and qualities of a vast swathe of single varieties, nail down styles and flavours from around Europe and the rest of the world, tap into perry cultures to which I would not otherwise have had access and generally crack open perry’s perennial mystique to tell the drink’s full, remarkable story. 

Perry may be a niche, but I know that the fascination, the interest and the sheer love is there. I know because of you, our readership here at Cider Review. You have proven, time and time again, that perry matters; that it doesn’t deserve to be an overlooked sidekick to its appley cousin. You have celebrated perry here, supported it in numbers and shared the joy we find in this wonderful drink. That there is a chance of this book happening whatsoever is down to a large number of people to whom I am immensely grateful, but not least of those is every single person who has read and shared anything we have written about perry on Cider Review.

The kickstarter, whatever shape it takes, will launch in October. You can be sure I’ll be talking about it here as well as on twitter and instagram – but for the most specific, to-the-minute-updates, sign up to CAMRA’s page here.

Perry deserves a book. You deserve a book. I am overjoyed that we may, imminently, have one.

*He 99.99999999999% probably didn’t. But if I say he definitely didn’t, someone is bound to unearth some old letter the day my book comes out.