Once upon a tree

 

I think Once Upon A Tree is a great name for this business. It's situated in the heart of Herefordshire, surrounded by fruit farms at Ann & Norman Stanier’s Dragon Orchard.  They run Cropsharers and the Sponsor A Tree schemes so you could have a direct involvement in this business!

At the orchard there's an attractive shop where you can look out at the orchards, and buy delicious food and drinks.  There's also work, like jewellery, by local artists for sale:

 

Depending on the time of year you may be able to buy their own apples, pears, plums, and quince etc. There's delicious chutneys and preserves like Czar or golden plum jam, or damson jelly, made from their own fruit. They also sell chocolates by School of Choc in Hereford, made with their own cider and perry.

 

However it's the juices, ciders and perrys that I've come for.  They're in the final three of the "Best Drinks Producer" category of this year's BBC Food & Farming Awards.

It's unusual to see a cider apple juice for sale (as many are too bitter as they are), but try their Brown's apple juice. There's something for every taste, as I'm writing this I'm enjoying their Herefordshire pear juice -  a blend of Conference and Comice pears.

However the real stroke of genius was to team up with Hannah and Simon Day.  Simon Day's father, Tom Day, helped set up the famous multi award winning Three Choirs Vineyard, 8 miles away in Newent.  If you've been put off traditional cider (and I have had some bad ones over the years) this is the place to come.  Simon has made wines all over the world and applies the same attention to detail to his ciders.  

They've won numerous awards in international cider and perry competitions.  There's blends and single variety ciders and dry, medium and sweet versions to suit every palate. 

There's also cakes for sale including Wye Valley Beer Cake (which won a Gold Great Taste Award) and Cider Cake which are made by Franks Luxury Biscuits in Hereford.

  

They also make ciders and perrys using the full traditional Champagne method, which would make a lovely gift:

 

I've left one of the best items until the end.  It's about as far removed from the traditional cloudy scrumpy as you could imagine!  They do a dessert cider and a dessert pear wine.  You might think they're rather expensive until you taste one and realise it would give good competition for some of the best fruit liqueurs.  

We'll be having the Blenheim Superb Dessert Cider 2009 on Christmas day with our cheese course, a little goes a long way! 

I called at Once Upon A Tree on a Sunday, next time I'll make sure I go on a Saturday so I can also visit Tom Oliver (7 miles up the road) who does more traditional ciders and perrys.  I don't regard them as competition, they make slightly different products and I enjoy both.  But the main reason for going on a Saturday is so that I can also visit the newly opened Three Counties Cider Shop in the lovely town of Ledbury (which has already had seven mentions in this blog).  Here I can buy all the ciders I've mentioned here and some others as well!

Stop Press: Congratulations to Once Upon A Tree for winning Best Drinks Producer in this year's BBC Food & Farming Awards:

Once Upon A Tree

Dragon Orchard
Putley
Ledbury
Herefordshire
HR8 2RG

Tel: 01531 670263

Web: www.onceuponatree.co.uk