The alphabetised names of storms have been reset for 2025 here in the UK, we’re back to the letter A. On Saturday 4^th October, Storm Amy made herself known and set in with agitated vigour. Naturally, I hopped in my van and travelled across from Norfolk in the early hours of the day to head to Herefordshire (as one does) for PerryFest 2025, held in the auspicious confines of the Museum of Cider in Hereford. On the drive over I was pushed, spat on, kicked, whistled at in my van…all by Storm Amy that is! It was a very real storm, and one that definitely brought a lot of fruit down from the trees. I half expected to turn up and be greeted by an empty car park and a somewhat empty event this year, given the weather. However, moving the event to a weekend, and to its new venue in the Museum of Cider appeared to have worked an absolute treat. I have never seen the museum so busy. Every room there was utilised and full to the brim with folk from all age groups, eager to learn a bit more about perry, and to revel in the festivities.

At midday I hosted a talk with James Forbes of Little Pomona all about Champagne Method/Traditional Method perry. For those that have read Adam’s brilliant review of this bottling, back in Nov 2023, you’ll already know how special a drink this is! The room upstairs next to the gallery was completely packed with punters eager to hear about this lesser-seen version of perry. If you thought perry was a rarefied drink in itself, harder to find in BIB or Bottle Conditioned format than its apple-originated sibling, then a champagne method perry that takes a good amount more intervention and patience to produce, is that much more the needle in the haystack a drink to find. James very kindly let us try his Brut de Poire 2021, as well as an as-of-yet unreleased version from the same vintage which has been allowed to stay resting on its lees for far longer than the bottle available on his webshop. And for those wondering how you get rid of the lees from the bottle, we were treated to a very interactive live disgorging of a bottle of two (those lucky few on the front row really got to experience the full power and majesty).

Downstairs in the wood-panelled Bulmers Boardroom, arranged over the board table itself, was the award-winning collection of perry pears displayed at the Malvern Autumn Show the week before. There’s something very fitting about seeing all these weird and wonderful perry pears, with a live audience of interested and inquisitive folk streaming into the room, all being watched over by the black and white portraits of the Bulmers family. One portrait stood out to me, that of a certain esteemed Dr Herbert Edward Durham, (not a Bulmer, but up the wall alongside the generations of that family), who in his time working for Bulmers, was responsible for documenting so many of these varieties in his sketch books and photograph albums back in the 1920s. I’m sure he’d be proud to see the renewed interest this fruit is generating amongst the craft perrymakers of 2025.

In-between talks, I found a quiet corner of the museum to have a quick chat with PerryFest 2025’s organisers: Elizabeth Pimblett, Director of the Museum of Cider, and Paul Stevens, former Mayor of Hereford.

CR: Elizabeth and Paul, I’m joining you here at PerryFest an evolution of Perry Day from the last few years. Can you tell us a bit about PerryFest 2025?

Elizabeth Pimblett: I think it evolved, really, didn’t it? There’s no AppleFest this year, and we were talking about what we could do to keep it ticking over, but also do something a little bit different. I think that’s when you really stepped in with the idea of PerryFest.

Paul Stevens:  I was disappointed when we lost the funding for AppleFest after three years. Elizabeth’s been a very big part of the organising committee for that. The thing that struck me, and I know you were there last year, Jack, was the Perry Day that we held at The Courtyard venue was amazing, we had so many bottles of perry there that had been gathered for the day. It was incredible. I wanted to carry that on because I felt that would be a smaller project to do than a whole AppleFest. So, we gathered a few people together, didn’t we to start the organising of it.

Elizabeth Pimblett: Yes, and then when we were talking about the ideas, it became apparent that The Courtyard wasn’t really going to be big enough for all of it, so that’s when I said, well, we’ve got the Museum of Cider, where we normally do a harvest event. We sacrificed our Pomona Day and it became PerryFest instead, with the Three Counties Cider and Perry Association being a key part.

CR: The whole site is heaving today. It’s noticeably busier than last year, so, well done on the organisation of that! What have people been enjoying over this blustery stormy day, inside and out?

Paul Stevens: Firstly, Elizabeth and I breathed a huge sigh of relief, we just didn’t know with the change of venue, how it was going to turn out. We knew Perry Day, as part of Applefest, we knew what we were into, and who was going to turn up, but today we’re just absolutely blown away with Storm Amy, with the amount of people that have come, obviously Tenbury have lost their AppleFest weekend with the storm. So, we may have picked up a few people from that, but I’ve seen so many new faces through the door today, not the usual characters that turn up at cider and perry events. So that struck me, and you’ve probably seen the same, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Pimblett: It’s been really nice to see faces that I don’t recognise. Obviously, the good friends that have turned up are very welcome too. It’s been really good. Some people have said, I’ve never been to museum before and I live just locally, so we get that you know every museum gets that, but that’s been really good that this has brought them in. I think if people weren’t aware of Perry, I think there probably are a lot more now that are, because the advertising has really carried people with it, hasn’t it?

Paul Stevens: I was saying to Jack over lunch, I’ve noticed there’s certainly people from the West Midlands. I’ve heard voices and accents. So people have definitely travelled to it today. We did suffer from train strikes last year during AppleFest, so that hit CAMRA and their volunteers. CAMRA have done a sterling job with their bar here today. Probably the first time CAMRA have ever done a standalone Perry bar before, must be a first for the country, I’d imagine.

CR: Whether it’s because we’re in the eye of the storm here, but it really does feel like there’s more chatter amongst people about Perry than ever before or for a long time. Let’s put it that way. We may have lost some of the big industrial players doing a core range of Perry, but we’ve got as many small producers as ever that are carefully tending to those orchards near them.

Elizabeth Pimblett: It seems that there’s more of an excitement around perry, doesn’t it? I think more people are realising it’s possible and are realising where the trees are and hunting down those trees. That’s a really good thing.

Paul Stevens: I know when we first talked about just doing a PerryFest day, I remember Albert and Tom saying, what a poor year’ obviously 2024 was for perry, but in the space of one year, everything’s completely turned because 2025 is going to be a fantastic vintage for perry, because of the weather we’ve had in this summer. It was lovely to be in the talk earlier with you, Jack, with James from Little Pomona. You opened it up to the floor and said: how many people have never tried Perry before? And there was certainly one gentleman who put his hand up and was like, wow,

CR: And I think it was he who got sprayed with disgorged perry from James, he got the full experience! Well thank you both very much for putting it on. It’s worth trekking over from Norfolk to visit for sure.

The second talk of the day that I hosted was with Tom Oliver, By Chance Or Design: Preserving Historic Varieties Of Perry Pears. The full transcript of this is coming in a subsequent Cider Review article as it’s a bit too big to include here. Nevertheless, the room upstairs was full to the brim with audience members, and it was great to see perry being the catalyst for so many wonderful ideas and adventures as described by Tom and other guests in the room.

Downstairs once more, and a chance to buy a bottle of James Marsden’s, aka Gregg’s Pitt, new 2022 vintage Thorn champagne method perry! This is one I’m saving to open once the sale of my flat finally goes through and I no longer have to pay two sets of mortgages at once (it’s been four months and counting so far!). Luke Bettison, of Nottingham’s Monkey Bridge Cider, popped over for a chat – he was in full swing with collecting and pressing perry pears with his friend Ali Smith (who won all those awards at the Malvern Autumn Show this year– the interlinking social groups of different makers all become apparent over time). You could see the renewed enthusiasm in his eyes for harvest time now he was making perry as well as cider. Great to feel the buzz of excitement from someone. On my way out of the venue I also got the chance to say hi to Matt Smith, who is in the wonderful position of just starting out to make perry and gets to use the veteran trees at Hellens Manor (as well as a few other special select locations) as his orchard. What a fantastic opportunity to start your perry-making journey on with trees that are between 200-300 years old! When would you ever get that age and provenance of tree to act as a muse and a catalyst in any other industry? I feel very happy for him to have caught the perrymaking bug and look forward to try the finished product in a year or two!

No visit to the Museum of Cider would be complete without the requisite exit through the gift shop. If you haven’t been before, their bottle collection for sale is something to marvel at. I picked up a Cwm Maddoc Oldfield, which fired up my synapses so much I placed an order for a tree to plant in my new orchard this winter, as well as a bottle of Tom Oliver’s Perry Vinegar, as I’m partial to a spoonful of it a day, mixed into a pint of water. To conclude, I understand nearly 700 punters through the door of the Museum of Cider for PerryFest 2025 deems it a massive success, and I very much look forward to visiting again next year and seeing some of you there too!