I’ll cut straight to the important part: as of today, the kickstarter for the book I have written – Perry: A Drinker’s Guide – is live. And if it hits its target, the book will be published by CAMRA Books on 9th May next year. 

As you’d expect, much of this kickstarter is focussed on advance-sale copies of the book. It’s really a ‘proof of concept’; a way of establishing interest. There are also t-shirts and opportunities to grab a limited edition signed copy (or a really limited edition unsigned copy). But the book is the main thing.

But what actually is perry?

I’ve spent the majority of my life not being able to answer this question. My sister drank Babycham at Christmas in our middle-teenage years, but at the time I assumed it was a sort of junior champagne, presumably from grapes. I dimly remember, probably around my university years, having it confused in my head with ‘Perrier’, and presumably imagining it as some kind of proto-seltzer. At some stage I must have become aware that it was something to do with pears, but it certainly didn’t occupy much of my mental space. Whisky, wine and macro cider. When it came to drinks, those were it, as far as I was concerned.

When I stumbled down the rabbit hole of what I’ve come to call ‘aspirational cider’ – full-juice, sensitively made drinks of craft and care – I still wasn’t much bothered by perry. Indeed I went out of my way to ignore it, seeing it (rightly) as a different drink and therefore (wrongly) as a distraction from my new-found interest.

But there is only so much you can avoid perry when you start regularly visiting the Oliver’s and the Ross-on-Wyes and the Butford Organics and Little Pomonas of this world, and so, inexorably, perry pulled me into its wonderful orbit.

And yet, as fascinated as I became by this drink, its remarkable fruits and the staggering trees those fruits grew on, I was struggling to find out all that much about it, beyond what I could glean from direct conversations with makers. When I got properly into wine, Oz Clarke’s ‘Let Me Tell You About Wine’ had been my invaluable initial guide. Armed with its contents I could begin to map the world out by flavour, get my head around grapes and regions and styles, visit a wine shop and choose a bottle with confidence.

Whisky was the same. I already knew a fair bit from holidays to Scotland and conversations with friends and my father, but digging further down the rabbit hole was simply a matter of visiting a bookshop, choosing any one of the large handful of volumes on offer and setting off in whichever direction I chose (to say nothing of the literally hundreds of blogs available on the subject).

When I found cider, I came across one of my all-time favourite drinks books: World’s Best Ciders by Pete Brown and Bill Bradshaw. It took me beautifully and comprehensively around cider and the world in which it is made. A couple of years later, Gabe Cook and Susanna Forbes published Ciderology and The Cider Insider respectively, further enriching the literary world of the fermented apple.

I have devoured books on mezcal, on beer, on rum, on gin. I’ve even read books on mead. Books on almost every fermented and distilled drink I can think of, each increasing my appreciation of its subject and guiding me through the category.

For perry, though, there was little. All of the cider writers I’ve mentioned touched on it. Pete and Bill’s chapter on Mostviertel in particular was a highlight of their book, and each offered either a chapter, or several pages, which furnished me with vital details. I always got the sense – especially from Gabe – that they would have liked to dedicate more space to perry than their publishers would allow. But inevitably, given just a chapter or so, there was a limit to how much information they could provide. Cider, in literature as in life, was the starring role. Perry was just glad to be mentioned.

For years now it has been my feeling that perry deserves more. That it is its own distinct drink, with its own flavours and textures and characters and stories and fruits and triumphs and tribulations. That all of this information I found myself gradually piecing together deserved a dedicated book in which the drink could be fully unpacked. The sort of book that I desperately wanted to read at the start of my journey in perry; the sort of book that I found so helpful in delving into the worlds of other drinks I love.

Which brings us back to Perry: A Drinker’s Guide.

This book is directly inspired by all those in the previous paragraphs – whether wine, whisky or cider. An attempt to offer, as fully as I can, a roadmap by which the curious drinker can explore the world and flavours of perries for themselves.

We’ll talk history, of course, because perry’s is fascinating and important, and the context of the last century, in which so many hundreds of thousands – indeed millions – of perry pear trees have been cut down is vital.

But principally, this is a book about flavour. About where those flavours come from; the trees and orchards that nurture them, first of all; the way they are tended, the terroirs in which they sit and the vintage cycle that imparts its unique annual thumbprint upon them.

We’ll talk about how perry is made; the perils and potential pitfalls that make it perhaps the hardest of all fermented drinks to perfect, as well as the different ways that talented producers navigate those perils in the pursuit of beauty.

Critically, we’ll talk about varieties. About the different flavours each provide. You could, of course, fill a whole book with descriptions of perry pears – indeed this is precisely what some people have done in the form of Pomonas – but this book is concerned about how those pears taste in your glass. Naturally there isn’t room to detail every perry pear in existence, but I have picked some thirty or so of my favourite varieties from Britain, France and Central Europe; varieties you might commonly find bottled on their own, and discussed the flavours in as much detail as I can manage.

We talk about styles – the various forms of presenting perry from still to traditional method to ice perry to mistelle – and all the ways that makers are achieving those different results. Long term readers of these pages may have perused our taxonomy; very much the inspiration for this section of the book, but in Perry: A Drinker’s Guide, it has been tailored specifically to perry, built out and refined.

We’ll talk about the appreciation of perry; tasting, glassware, food matching of course – all as recommendations, rather than instruction, since the object of the book is to help the reader find their own path. And we’ll talk about the countries and cultures that make perry around the world, from its three key modern heartlands in the UK, France and Austria, to those countries like Switzerland and Germany where perry was once central to rural culture, but is now clinging on thanks to a handful of dedicated and inspiring makers. Talking of inspiring, we’ll visit countries overseas where perry is finding new audiences. Places like the USA (though the history of perry there is older than you might think) Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and many more besides, meeting 101 producers – because Caroline told me that was the proper number – along the way.

Especially excitingly, I’m delighted to say that there’ll even be a foreword from one of the world’s foremost perrymakers, Albert Johnson of Ross-on-Wye Cider & Perry – someone whose insights on the drink and the pears that make it have been fundamental to my own journey of discovery, and who has become one of my closest friends.

I never expected, when I announced my intention to attempt this book last November, that I would have the opportunity to work with a real publisher. Much as I love it, I have to admit that perry is a niche – and a much-misunderstood one at that. CAMRA’s belief in this project and willingness to adjust their annual cider month and campaigning strategy to make it happen has been overwhelming. The more I have written, the more I have spoken to the team at CAMRA, to my friends, to makers and to readers of these pages, the more convinced I have become in what we are trying to do. Perry’s story is remarkable – even more so than I realised at the start of this project – and it is something I want to share with as many people as possible.

But to do that I need your help.

Pre-sales are important to any book. But in this instance its very existence and publication will depend on them. If we hit our target in October, Perry: A Drinker’s Guide goes ahead. Perry gets its book and, I hope, drinkers become better armed to understand, navigate and fall in love with this drink as I have. 

If I’ve learned anything from my time writing on Cider Review and in the column on malt-review.com that begot it, it’s that the people who know and love cider and perry are some of the most dedicated, determined, passionate, inspiring and enthusiastic supporters of any drink in existence. We may be a small group, but we are growing; there are more of us than ever before, and whilst we may have a broad spectrum of ideas on how these drinks can progress, we are united both by our love for them and by our certainty that they are something special.

I hope that Perry: A Drinker’s Guide can share that joy and wonder. I hope that it can be the book that this miraculous drink has long deserved. I hope it helps a broader audience to discover just how special perry is, and to wander its myriad international avenues of flavour as so many of us have been privileged to both here and elsewhere. 

I would love for the fantastic collective that is the Cider Review readership to join me in bringing these ambitions to life.

The kickstarter for Perry: A Drinker’s Guide can be found here, and should be going live today.