Traditional Orchards & Fine Cider

Traditional orchards are hotspots for biodiversity, supporting a wide range of wildlife including Nationally Rare and Nationally Scarce species. But they’re highly threatened. In unsprayed traditional orchards, this biodiversity creates biological control systems that even prevents the need for spraying. Why don’t we value orchards and cider like we do vineyards and wine when apples have the potential to produce delicious alcoholic beverages as diverse and complex as wine, with the added benefit of requiring zero chemical sprays?

As a result of their being undervalued traditional orchards have been being grubbed up at an alarming rate since WW2, and it is still happening today.

In 2015 Polly Hilton founded Find & Foster and started working with local farmers and orchard owners in Devon to help breathe life back into their traditional orchards, preventing further decline and the extinction of important local varieties, aiming to create balanced, biodiverse ecosystems that thrive with wildlife and require minimal human intervention. Along with her husband Mat, they have grown a flock of pedigree Shropshire sheep to control weeds and reduce the need for mowing.

Along with making protecting these precious environments an economically sustainable activity, my aim has always been to showcase the varieties that grow in the orchards by creating cider that’s made and valued in the same way as wine.