On Saturday 14th October I had the privilege of being invited to give one of the keynote speeches at Hereford’s City Hall for the AppleFest Grand Banquet. Being more a writer than a speaker – my only previous speeches were as a groom and as a best man, where you’re generally guaranteed a certain measure of goodwill – I’d been very nervous beforehand. Thank goodness there was a lectern to cling to – I reckon you could hear it shaking. But it was a fantastic event and a very friendly crowd and I made it through more or less unscathed.

A few folk made some very kind comments afterwards and a couple suggested that I pop it up on Cider Review for general consumption. Never one to shy from some easy bonus content, I’m sharing it in full today (with a few tweaks from my original script, since I made a couple of on-the-fly additions during the course of speaking).

For those who’d prefer to listen to it in its original format, my Cider Voice colleague Albert was on hand, kindly recorded it all, and it’s now available on the podcast here (or wherever you prefer to listen to your podcasts). Caroline even made a video that you can watch here if you’d like to appreciate the full scale of lectern trembling!

(One last shameless PS, which is just to do the usual reiteration that the kickstarter/pre-orders for my book, Perry: A Drinker’s Guide is still open. Massive thanks to everyone who got us past the target so quickly. The book’s still available to pre-order here if you’d like to order a copy and win my undying gratitude. Cheers!)

AppleFest Banquet Speech

Thanks so much Paul.

I’m not as practiced a speaker as Bill and I didn’t realise powerpoint was an option! So there’ll be no visually distracting multimedia to engage with I’m afraid – just 25 minutes of my faltering prose, in a quite monotonous voice, with no breaks, no questions and no topping up of your drinks.

Um, what an occasion! A perry banquet! I don’t know whether they’ve had them in France or Austria – they might have done in Normandy or the Mostviertel, and I don’t know whether there’s been a perry banquet held here in Herefordshire or the Three Counties more broadly before, but whether or not there has, this is an incredible thing. A really rare and special thing. 

So thank you so much to all of you first of all – to all the people who have been part of bringing this amazing banquet together, everyone who’s cooked and served the incredible food we’ve eaten, been involved in making the perries we’ve drunk, and the Applefest organisers for being brave enough to theme so much of the festival, and this grand finale banquet around perry. It’s a huge, huge honour to be invited to speak at it.

For those of you who haven’t met me, my name’s Adam, I’m a sort of multi-purpose drinks writer – kind of the Swiss Army Knife of scribbling about alcohol – and I’ve written about cider and perry for a little over five years now. But I guess the main reason I’m here tonight – and I’ll get the shameless plug out of the way straight away, so it’s done and we can forget about it – is that I’ve just written a book called Perry: A Drinker’s Guide, which is as far as I know the first consumer-focussed book about perry. It’s being published next year and my publisher CAMRA Books has been doing a bit of a pre-sales kickstarter this month, so if you’ve enjoyed the perries tonight, think you’d maybe like to learn a little more about them all … please do head to the site and order a copy – need those sales!

But anyway. Enough of that. No more plugs, I promise.

Um, I’m aware that speakers at events like these tend to be advocates and communicators like me, rather than necessarily perrymakers themselves – though I know Albert spoke last year. And obviously it’s the makers and the growers and orchardists who are ultimately responsible for perry and for this banquet coming to be. 

There’s a quote in the Oxford Companion to Wine that I really like which says that wine writers are inherently parasitical, or something like that. And that’s true. And it’s true of cider and perry writers as well. It’s perry, and perrymakers, who are the host, we’re just feeding off the backs of them, glad to have something to write about. So I want to take a moment before really launching into the speech to thank the perrymakers of Herefordshire whose work we’re really here to celebrate.

And of course an especially big thank you to James, Susanna and Laurence at Little Pomona, Tom and Jarek at Oliver’s, Albert, Mike, John, Becky, Bob, Martin and everyone else at Ross on Wye and Paul and his team at Newton Court, who have provided the perries we’ve drunk with the banquet today. As well as Taylor and the team at the Houghton Project, Robinsons and our Warwickshire interlopers from Napton. I won’t get you to do a show of hands on a favourite, don’t worry.

So yes, I want to thank all of Herefordshire’s perrymakers, absolutely. But more than that, I just also want to say on the record and in front of everyone gathered here at this banquet that perrymakers are without doubt some of the most irretrievably idiotic people I’ve ever met in my life.

I’m being absolutely serious here. I’m not being funny. Are you all ok, perrymakers? I just, I feel you might have been stood out in the sun too long. There’s just no rational part of the human brain in which perrymaking is even a borderline sensible occupation. A serious person wouldn’t countenance it. You should all be sat down with weak tea and ask yourselves if things are alright.

So, first of all, the Barland pear. That’s more or less the first properly named perry pear variety we come across in the UK, going back 370 years or so. And at the time, the description from John Beale – who is credited as more or less the godfather of British pomology and therefore plainly was another idiot – was that ‘our hungry swine will not bite these pears’.

Now then, what sensible person sees a pig spit out these horrible, inedible, painfully astringent fruits and thinks ‘hmm. Might be something here?’ No one. But a perrymaker goes ‘ooh now, but hear me out. What if we fermented it?’

‘Oh, what, sort of like wine?’

‘Yeah’

‘But not wine.’

‘No, no, god no’.

‘And not from, you know, the nice tasting pears over there?’

‘No we shall use these minuscule hate-spheres that have just taken the skin off John’s mouth.’

‘Right, super’.

‘And we shall also use pears that we have decided to call Choke Pears.’

‘The ones described as having ‘a harshness and evil taste?’

‘Yes, those ones.’

So we have our horrible tasting fruit. And incidentally, 370 years later, this pig-reject pear, Barland, is still being made into perry. I had one of Ross-on-Wye’s just the other day. And it was lovely. But this is merely the beginning of the idiocy. For this fruit grows on trees which are also idiotic.

In the book which I’ve written about this unserious drink – sorry, I did say no more plugs – and on Cider Review, which is the kind of repository for my general cider and perry stream of consciousness, I am relentlessly guilty of purple prose regarding perry pear trees. Because they’re amazing, right? I mean they can live for over 300 years. 300 years! Here in Herefordshire there are trees dating back to the coronation of Queen Anne. Some potentially even further. 

There are trees that grow 60 feet tall, trees with 50 foot canopies. And so of course, like a good little drinks writer, I have sat at my laptop and naively wittered away my rhapsodies about their grandeur and drama and general sundry amazingness. But this week I have been working at Ross-on-Wye Cider and Perry Company, and I spent the first day harvesting mostly from Hendre Huffcap perry pear trees, and I take it all back, they’re not grand or majestic or dramatic or amazing or anything like that, they are stupid nonsense.

A tree from which one must harvest simply has no need of being sixty foot tall. At tree from which one must harvest has no business having thorns in it. A tree from which one must harvest simply should not be holding an entire tonne of fruit – that is plainly nonsense. And the trees agree with me on this point – because I have seen some of them literally break under the weight of pears they are ill-advisedly attempting to bear. 

Yellow Huffcap pears rot from the inside out whilst they are still on the branch. Moorcroft offers a 24 hour window of ripeness in which you must press it. Thorn not much longer. These are not sensible plants; these are not plants you can do business with. They should be about this high [demonstrate], with a manageable amount of fruit that you can go along and just pick without having to wait for it all to fall to the ground where half of it rots or breaks or gets busted up by branches on the way down. We could call them, oh I don’t know, vines or something like that.

But perrymakers persevere, because they’re … well I shan’t labour the point. They take their inedible fruit from their over the top pantomime trees, and they go to press it. And oh look, their press is all gummed up in about two minutes. Oh look, the pears have bletted so much they’re turning the hydropess into a dirty protest. Oh look they’ve been able to do a quarter the perry in a day that they could have made of cider because they’ve been ungumming it all the way through. Oh look the pears are still rock hard. [Glance away for a split second then look back]. Oh look, they’re mush.

And then the pear juice is so fragile that it’s under heavy threat from just about every bacteria going. And then the pears contain citric acid, so you can do absolutely everything right, but malolactic fermentation happens anyway and oh look it’s turned to vinegar. Oh look, the ludicrous tannic makeup of this absurd fruit has thrown sediment that looks like extra terrestrial sweetbreads. Oh look you’ve decanted it to get rid of the alien brains and they’ve just reformed in the bottle anyway. Oh look, you’ve blended two perfectly clear perries together and now they’re milk. 

And to top it all off, pears are full of an unfermentable sugar called sorbitol that is also a laxative and has given perry a distinctly dodgy reputation. Although for all of you who have drunk lots of perry tonight and are maybe feeling slightly concerned about this now, it’s a grossly over-egged reputation. If the perry’s not made from rotten fruit, you’re fine. Or I’d be in big trouble. A lot.

Anyway, so you do all that, you go through heartache and ground teeth and absurd challenges beyond any drink I’ve ever come across – and one way or another I’ve come across most of them – and you’ve made your perry, and it turns out barely anyone’s heard of perry anyway, and the people who don’t assume you’ve just made babycham are asking ‘is it like pear cider’.

And breathe.

There’s only one justification for all this obvious nonsense. And I’ve never heard it better expressed than by Tom Oliver when I interviewed him a few years ago. It’s one of my favourite quotes about perry, I use it in the book, I use it ad nauseam in articles and I’m going to repeat it again here and it goes: 

‘It’s that drink, honestly. Cider’s great, and I drink far more cider than perry, but if I want to show off to somebody it’s usually a perry I go for. If it didn’t make a great drink we would stop making perry tomorrow. It’s too demanding, it takes too much that doesn’t fit in with apples – making cider’s a piece of cake compared to making perry, but it’s that drink.’

It is that drink. That rare and special and marvellous and magical drink. All of you sitting here are immensely, immensely lucky. You are privy to the best kept, and perhaps most wonderful secret in the world of drinks.

In 2023 there are only three places in the world where enough perry is made that they can really call themselves perry regions. Three in the world. There’s Domfront, in Normandy. There’s The Mostviertel, in lower Austria. And if you love perry I highly recommend you visit both if you get the chance. And the third is here. The Three Counties and Monmouthshire. But for the overwhelming part, today, we’re talking here in Herefordshire.

If Herefordshire didn’t exist – and I’m saying this with a bit of a deep breath – modern British cider could cope. It would be a massive hole of course – there’s the world’s biggest producer, other huge producers besides, and many – arguably most – of the best makers in the UK. (Actually, can I just check there’s no one from Somerset or Devon in as I’m saying that!)

But it could cope. There are other big, substantial cider cultures in the UK. Somerset and Devon, Kent, Wales, East Anglia and increasing places besides.

But if Herefordshire didn’t exist, modern British perry probably wouldn’t either.

I’m doing a slight disservice to Gloucestershire there perhaps, and of course Worcestershire’s history with perry and pears is so ingrained that they have pears on their crest. There are certainly brilliant makers in both counties, and Gloucestershire in particular has phenomenal pear orchards, the National Perry Pear Collection and is home to May Hill itself as well as Jim Chapman, Gabe Cook and Charles Martell, some of the drink’s foremost champions of the last few decades.

But in terms of the energy of modern perry, in terms of the most makers, the best makers, the drive for perry to get its wind, to have its moment, be seen as its own drink, this is the place. Herefordshire. The modern heart of British perry without any shadow of a doubt in my mind, just as it has been for hundreds of years. 

It’s no surprise that the impetus for yesterday’s first ever Perry day came from Herefordshire, nor that it overwhelmingly featured Herefordshire makers. As more and more people have discovered perry over the last five years or so, buoyed by the rethink cider movement, it’s generally been Herefordshire makers – like Ross-on-Wye, Little Pomona, Oliver’s, Gregg’s Pit, Bartestree, Cwm Maddoc, Newton Court – that they’ve found first. 

And it is those Herefordshire makers that have been the inspiration for perrymakers outside the Three Counties to make perry for themselves; to graft perry pear trees in Somerset, in Lancashire, in East Anglia, in Scotland – and across the seas to orchard in America, in Australia, in New Zealand. The world is seeing this quiet perry renaissance, and make no mistake – it is being driven in no small part by people who are in this room today.

The breadth of perry, in Herefordshire alone, is unparalleled anywhere in the world. Perry is being made as well in Austria and in France, but you simply cannot find the range of flavours and styles there that you can in this small county in the west midlands. There are pear varieties that taste of soft fruit and flowers, zingy, zesty, super-citrusy perries, there are perries that are these massive mouthfuls of beautifully tropical fruits and there are perries that don’t necessarily taste of other particular fruits at all, but evoke woodland walks, or riversides, and are minerally and earthy and just packed full of soul.

At Ross-on-Wye alone you can try – I don’t even know – how many single varieties have you just brought out Albert? I think we tasted through eight the other day – all totally different. They’ve got three different bottlings imminent of Thorn Pear alone – and you know what, every one is different again, every one speaks of its pear, its tree, its place, its vintage.

Then you go to Little Pomona and there’s still perry, traditional method perry, traditional method perry with damsons because why on earth not? Pét nat perry. Perrykin. Perry with sour cherries that’s meant to taste like Lambrusco – and genuinely does. There’s Tom with his Barrel room series, his rolling blends and his peerless Keeved perries. There’s Cwm Maddoc doing single varieties again, but in this detailed, delicate way – totally different to the way Ross or Bartestree or anyone else is going about it.

There’s ice perry – The Wonder from Once Upon a Tree – a super sweet dessert style that you drink the same way as something like a Sauternes. As far as I know, no one’s currently making fortified perry in Herefordshire, or mistelle, which is juice mixed with spirit – but I know people are distilling some of their perry now and so I live in hope. 

Perry anywhere has always been shy. It’s always been a sidekick to cider. It’s always hidden away a little. But right now, to me, Herefordshire perry seems as if it’s gaining that confidence. It’s there in the perries being made, that are just better, more innovative, more flavourful than ever. It’s there in the perry tastings we see, in Herefordshire and elsewhere. And of course it’s there in the fact that perry has brought us all together tonight.

Perry is not without challenges. Both the sort that I was talking about perhaps a little glibly at the start, and challenges like fireblight, which is a really serious incurable bacterial disease that’s wreaking havoc in young trees at the moment. There’s still the challenge of getting it in front of people – in front of new audiences, audiences who primarily live a long way from where perry is made and who don’t know about this drink.

We still need more makers. We need to keep pushing the incredible work that people like the three counties cider and perry association are doing with things like craftcon and events like yesterday’s perry day. We need to tell perry’s incredible stories – stories like these trees, these amazingly idiotic, idiotically amazing trees that have been harvested for a hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years. 

I mean the planting of the Queen Anne Coronation trees at Hellen’s Manor was closer to the start of the Wars of the Roses than it was to today – that is mind blowing. And to be harvested more or less year on year allowing for biennialism for all that time. There’s just nothing like it. So we need to tell those stories. We need to talk about those pears, about all of the unique and precious varieties and the different flavours each one brings. We need to share all of this.

And we need to reach out internationally. There are incredible perry cultures in France and in Austria, and they’re facing the same challenges that perry is here. We need to meet them, exchange knowledge, create this international chorus of perry advocacy, and it can be led by some of the makers, some of the advocates here tonight. 

Because perry isn’t invulnerable. It is possible for a perry culture to just disappear completely. When you look across a map of Europe you can draw a band from here to Austria and probably further, along which perry was consistently grown for centuries. In places like Luxembourg, where there’s now only one producer. In Switzerland, which had probably the world’s greatest perry culture 150 years ago, but cut down 11 million fruit trees in 25 years and now have virtually no perry at all. And southern Germany, where it was a central part of rural culture, just as it was here, in France, in Austria, in so many places besides – but where it’s just drifted away, almost from existence.

It is astonishingly special that perry has endured here in Herefordshire. And it really mustn’t be taken for granted. It has been kept alive by a handful of inspiring, dedicated, brave, determined, optimistic, creative people – and yes, there might be a little streak of idiocy there too. But it has been kept alive because those people knew just how wonderful perry can be. How flavourful. How elegant. How beautiful with food. How distinctive and special and rare and precious it is. Because it has a soul, and when you’re here, in the three counties, you can feel it. Because it is, as Tom says, that drink. Because it’s that drink.

If tonight represents anything, it is a vote of confidence in Herefordshire perry. In this secretive, precious, vulnerable jewel in the crown of British drinks. It has travelled a long, long way to reach tonight, it was never guaranteed that it would, and the road, as they say, has been rocky. But it’s arrived nonetheless, and speaking to you all here tonight, seeing the amazing perry events that this year’s applefest has put on, it feels like the start of something. 

So thank you for that, and thank you to all of you who make and drink and love perry, and thank you so much for having me here and listening to me today. Cheers to perry.

Thanks to the AppleFest organisers – particularly Paul Stevens – for inviting me to speak. Also to Elizabeth Pimblett for the photos of me speaking. And Albert and Becky for a couple of the additional photos here.