Our apple orchard was planted to commemorate the new millennium and features authentic, traditional varieties of apple that were either available locally, or likely to be in growing on the estate itself around the time that the castle would have been actively producing food for the local community.
In September, a workforce of around fifty volunteers, including students, staff and several members of public, attended our first annual Millennium Orchard Harvest. The brainchild of Hannah Akehurst on the Gardens Team, the idea was to bring in the entire harvest on a single day and sample each variety of apple juice using our small (but mighty!) apple press.
The apples were sorted by variety and then Luke and George (pictured below) provided the muscle to put them through the jaws of a ‘scratter’ – a machine that literally grinds the apples to a pulp, before the resulting apple mash was drained of its juice in our wooden cider press.
Hannah said, “It was an amazing turnout from the students, and really great to be able to separate and try each individual variety of apple as a juice. Now we can work on a special blend of flavours to be bottled as Herstmonceux Castle Apple Juice.”
All of our apples were sent to Ringden Farm in Kent to be professionally pressed and pasteurised to make the juice legally available for sale to the public.
Our thirsty volunteers more than earned the right to sample their hard work before it is sent away and drank apple juice sourced straight from the press. The result was a unanimous thumbs up! It seems all our Wassailing earlier in the year has yielded a delicious result!