Is cider the ultimate, eco-friendly tipple?

The frantic hammering of a woodpecker. Insects buzzing. There’s grass below the trees, but wildflowers, too. Sheep graze between the trunks, with fat apples hanging overhead. 

It’s a bucolic scene that was once normal across parts of Britain, particularly the West Country. But the past few decades have been tough on orchards. According to the National Trust, the area covered by orchards in England and Wales has more than halved since the early 20th century. 

In Devon, 90 per cent of cider orchards have been uprooted since World War Two, as governments prioritised ‘feed the nation’ crops such as maize. According to the National Association of Cider Makers, 2,000 acres of orchards have been lost in recent years. Earlier this year Heineken, which owns Bulmers Cider, pulled up a 300-acre orchard in Monmouthshire. Locals told the BBC it was an important habitat for migratory redwing and fieldfare. 

“Many orchards in the UK are being grubbed out to make way for new land uses which have a higher direct economic value associated with them, such as growing cereals and housing,” says Polly Hilton, founder of Devon-based cider producer Find & Foster. 

Hilton is part of a new wave of producers shifting the drink’s image as mass-produced teenage festival fodder or super-strength white cider. Producers of ‘fine cider’ are saving – and planting – orchards while making high-quality drinks. “Traditional orchards should be supported and much better protected,” says Felix Nash, owner of The Fine Cider Company. 

Large, commercial cider makers, Nash explains, rarely work with traditional orchards, preferring larger plantations – often monocultures. They import a high percentage of apples, and cider only needs to be made with 35 per cent apple juice, which can be concentrate. But a growing number of British cider makers are fighting to save traditional orchards, arguing that they not only make great cider but are environmentally crucial – with cider being one of the most eco-friendly forms of alcohol there is. 

Apples are a perennial crop, which means there’s no annual tilling. They grow well in polycultural systems that mimic nature – such as silvopasture, where trees, forage crops and livestock are integrated. 

When managed traditionally, several apple varieties often grow side by side, leading to greater biodiversity. The trees can be over 100 years old and are excellent carbon sinks. Few spray chemicals, preferring to encourage the birds which keeps pests down. Orchards are rarely ploughed, so the soil is some of the healthiest around. 

Find & Foster began in 2015, when Hilton realised that many orchards on farms near her home in the Exe Valley no longer had any economic value. Those apples, she thought, could be turned into cider. “When you’re lucky enough to walk around [an orchard] you see all the apple varieties,” says Hilton. “They’re such amazing places. You just need to stand in one to see it. They’re real biodiversity hotspots.” The orchards she works with – now around five or six – house rare insects like noble chafer beetles and birds including endangered lesser-spotted woodpeckers. 

The wildlife, Hilton explains, creates a “biological control system” that prevents the need for spraying, unlike at intensively-farmed orchards, where trees can be vulnerable to disease. The orchards she works with are never sprayed – “there are usually enough ladybirds to keep the aphids in check.” Though the oldest apple trees don’t absorb much carbon, they store plenty. Unhealthy trees are replaced by young trees that photosynthesise, thus capturing more carbon. 

The orchards Find & Foster work with range from 30 to 200 trees, and are within five miles of her home. Hilton insists on a circular economy: pruned branches are put through a chipper, rotted down and used as the first layer of mulch for newly planted trees. The sheep which graze the orchards are sheared and the dirty fleece is used as a top layer of mulch, while clean wool is turned into yarn. The fleece, says Hilton, helps with weed suppression, moisture retention and nutrient enrichment, while deterring pests, too. At 10 or 11 years old, the sheep are slaughtered and fed to groups of harvest helpers, or sold to the restaurants that buy their cider. The livestock replace mowing, reducing fossil fuels. Their grazing also encourages a mix of grasses and wildflowers which supports more insects, thereby attracting birds. 

Further north in Chew Magna, Somerset, a similar story has unfolded. Sam Leach founded Wilding Cider in 2018. Previously, he made cider as a hobby using eating apples from a friend’s parent’s orchard. Soon the opportunity to rent a 4.5 acre cider apple orchard in Chew Magna arose, and, along with his partner Beccy, he now rents nine acres scattered across local villages. They grow 35 varieties of cider apple, from trees mostly aged 20-40 years, though some are older than 100. There’s a mix of varieties, mostly native Somerset apples like Dabinnet, Yarlington Mill, Porter’s Perfection and Stoke Red. The orchards are traditionally managed with sheep (and some dairy cows) grazing below the canopy. 

There’s no spraying of chemicals, no tillage and no weeding, except when planting new trees. Prunings are chipped and composted, while sheep mob graze – rotating between patches of grass and, ideally, moved every day. This, Leach explains, has multiple benefits. It allows the grass to grow longer, encouraging deeper roots and healthier soil. The sheep are moved on when a third of the grass remains. “The more you leave, the faster the plant can recover, so the grass is pumping carbon and sugars into the soil,” Leach explains. He argues the grazing leads to more carbon sequestered, better water retention, and provides a better surface for the ripe fruit to land on. 

“It’s quite extraordinary,” says Leach. It’s not how the majority of apples are grown, “but it’s common among small cider makers. It’s probably more common among people of our scale rather than bush orchards,”

Another benefit is the three crops: apples, wool and meat. “If you compare a holistic system of traditional orchards, then try to get the same from separated, specialised orchards and pasture, you would need significantly more land. It’s definitely the direction we should be moving in.” 

Variety also provides resilience. A freak frost destroying the apple harvest wouldn’t impact the wool or meat. Leach says the shade provided by the trees provides a more relaxed, calmer environment for the animals to thrive. 

In the 17th century, diarist John Evelyn described cider as “the native wine of England”. England now makes plenty of wine, but is cider preferable, environmentally speaking? Its proponents think so. “Unlike vines, bird species actually live in these trees,” says Nash. Leach argues that the carbon emissions and environmental impact of vineyards are far worse, even when organic or biodynamics, where copper or sulphur can be sprayed. 

“Earlier in the year a lot of winemakers I spoke to – good natural winemakers – were saying there hasn’t been many butterflies this year,” says Hilton. “Step into a traditional orchard and you walk through clouds of butterflies. In an orchard, you don’t need to spray a thing, and there’s so much more wildlife.” 

When it comes to alcohol, apples might be the future beyond cider. Around 800,000 apples a week are wasted in the UK, and there are growing calls to use them to make not only more cider, but neutral spirits for whisky and gin. Compared with the grains that usually make those spirits, and the amount of water needed to grow them, apples just need rain, making them a bit of an ecological marvel, too.