Somerset’s cider apple growers know this is not a freak year.
“What we used to think of as extreme weather, we increasingly consider as normal.” says Mike Kendon, a climate scientist at the Met Office.
But what can an apple grower do about it?
Neil MacDonald is now watering newly planted trees.
“Five years ago you would just dig a good hole and leave nature to get on with it,” he smiles.
“Now you can’t get away with that, you have to irrigate young trees or they die.”
But irrigation for hundreds of acres of cider orchards is “just not viable”, he said. Farmers who grow eating apples for supermarkets command higher prices for their fruit, so traditionally they have invested in irrigation systems.
Cider growers are now having to rethink their calculations.
Most fundamentally of all, climate change may actually change the taste of West Country cider.
One of the main varieties that gives Somerset cider its bittersweet taste is Dabinett. Several growers have found these trees producing very few apples this year, not because of the drought, but the mild winter.
“Dabinett needs a cold snap,” MacDonald explains. “We just didn’t get the cold winter days this year or last, so it’s not producing.”
He is now grafting other varieties onto his Dabinett trees, plants that fare better in hot dry weather.
As our climate changes, the very taste of Somerset cider may change too.
