Tracie Beardsley raises a pint glass to one of Dorset’s youngest cider makers – moving an ancient craft into a thriving 21st-century business
All images: Courtenay Hitchcock The BV
While his schoolmates were scrumping apples for fun, a 15-year-old Bill Meaden was carefully hand-picking them and taking the first steps to running his own craft cider business. Along side his father Simon – a third-generation Dorset farmer – Bill recalls trips with his father, Simon – a third-generation Dorset farmer – to the Square and Compass at Worth Matreavers, where the duo made their early batches of ‘liquid gold’. ‘Apples on the ground are such a waste, so we’d harvest from unused orchards on the Rushmore Estate and dabble in cider making,’ says Simon.
Bill got the cider-calling so strongly that when travelling the world as a college-leaver, he ached for the taste of home: ‘A lot of countries don’t make cider’, he says. ‘I realised how special our long cider heritage is, especially here in Dorset.’
Cider-making in Dorset is recorded as far back as the 13th century: the Blackmore Vale was home to prolific cider producers in the 1700s.
Buoyed with enthusiastic, entrepreneurial spirit, he returned home at the age of 19 and juggled working as a metal fabricator with a part-time job as a brewer at Sixpenny Brewery, while making his own cider at weekends.
‘I was a young man enjoying an artisan pursuit that is dominated by older people … but they were all so generous in sharing their knowledge with me, for which I’m forever grateful,’ he says.
Bill’s first cider press was thanks to his metalworking skills – a handmade hydraulic press, powered by the farm tractor. Today, it stands redundant outside the modern cider processing barn, framed by the new orchards Bill himself has planted – it’s a visual timeline of how his labour of love has ripened in 14 years. Inside, a huge, second-hand industrial press processes up to 100 tonnes of fruit in three months. Apples are riddled, washed, milled and pressed into award-winning still cider, apple juice, and the sparkling new hit – Dorsecco. ‘We couldn’t resist jumping on the prosecco bandwagon,” he says.
‘No two ciders are ever the same,’ says Bill. ‘Even with the same apple trees – the yeast, soil and weather all play a role. The old whisky barrels we use to store the vintage cider influence the taste, too.
‘Every batch is unique. That’s the magic.’
Family business
Cranborne Chase Cider is run by the whole Meaden clan. It’s all-hands-to-the-orchards for harvesting, then back to the farm for processing, fermenting, barrelling and packaging. Around the big farmhouse table, the family tastes the latest batches of cider.Bill’s mum Denise helps design the packaging labels and runs the farm’s shepherd’s hut guest accommodation. The cider shop itself is a converted hut. The basic rule there is ‘anyone home answers the bell!’
Simon farms arable crops and also runs a bench hire business – if you’ve been to one of our local country shows, you’ve probably sat on one of them. Bill’s wife Orla, a solicitor, handles the paperwork and at weekends helps run the pop-up Cider Shack – another converted shepherd’s hut which is a popular presence at local country shows.
And if the family hasn’t got enough to do managing around 2,000 apple trees across 20 orchards, they also run Last of the Summer Cider – a music and cider festival. It takes place on their farm during September and visitors can expect DJs, live music, steam engines, cider-pressing demos, ferret racing, blacksmithing, crafts and pottery.
Simon says: ‘We nearly lost everything as pig farmers – it was a wake-up call to spread risks by diversifying. The cider business has allowed Bill to pursue his passion and has also presented other opportunities for the farm.’
Growth, resilience, diversification … but Bill determinedly stays hands-on. ‘I love working with the trees, harvesting, pruning and making cider. The orchard is a magical place for me and has been ever since I was a kid – woodpeckers in winter, skylarks in spring, the bees and the beautiful blossom … I never want to lose that connection with nature.’
https://cranbornechasecider.co.uk
Quickfire questions for Bill:
Books by your bedside?
I’ve got a classic Mini – after cider, the classic Mini is my passion – so there’s a lot of Mini magazines.
And lots of orchard management and apple varieties guides … Also books by Liz Copas and Nick Poole – they set up the Dorset Apple Tree Analysis Project (DATA) to create a true Dorset cider from Dorset cider apple varieties. They searched out the remnants of traditional orchards across Dorset to save our old varieties.
My inspiration!
I grow some of those rare varieties in my own orchards.
Who would you like to drink cider with?
Some of the characters we’ve named our cider after: General Pitt Rivers – to understand more about the Rushmore Estate orchards he planted. And Isaac Gulliver, Dorset’s most famous
smuggler. I’m sure he’d love to know a cider has been named after him.
