A Fruitful Time: Turning Apples into Juice and Liqueur
October is national apple month, reflected in honey hued autumnal days. This year, following a settled spring and hot sunny summer, there has been a bumper crop of apples, and allotments, gardens and orchards have apple trees weighed down with sweet glossy fruit. No one wants to waste this delicious harvest, but only so much apple crumble can be consumed.
The answer is to get pressing. Simply drop off your fruit (the smallest quantity is a well filled washing basket) at Kimpton Apple Press, Kimpton Manor Farm Yard, Kimpton, near Andover. Here Virginia Clarke has been pressing apples into delicious fruit for some eight years, with the Press's popularlity growing each year. Kimpton Apple Press also presses pears and other fruit without stones, such as raspberries, which combine well with apples.
Most apples are accepted, unless bruised or rotten, and different varieties can be blended together. Fruit can be dropped off at any time, any day. Virginia says: “The drop off site is ‘self-organised’; you just fill in a form. People like it as there is something quite old-fashioned, relaxed and ‘country’ about this approach."
However, if anyone wants to deliver more than 12 crates of apples these do need to be booked in beforehand (email kimptonapplepress@gmail.com or call 01264 771507). Juice can be collected between 3-4:30pm Monday to Friday and 11am-12pm Saturday morning. The juice lasts for up to eight months (if you can resist that long) and tastes simply delicious. Only a few drops of vitamin C are added (to stop the brown oxidisation you get when you peel apples). Nothing else is added: no sugar, no preservative, no ‘nasties’. Bottles can be given personalised labels, for an extra charge per 750ml bottle, helping to make these a really charming personal Christmas gift as well as a special and healthy celebratory drink over the festive season.
Virginia continues: “We have been launched into our biggest year yet as there has been a bumper crop of apples. I am not sure when we will shut as that depends on the apple harvest, but I expect we will be going until mid-November.”
Kimpton Apple Press also offer the opportunity to transform your apple crop into a sweet sticky boozy tipple. Called Churchwarden’s, this 25% ABV apple liqueur is made according to a secret family recipe and then aged in oak barrels for up to two years. It makes a lovely warming nightcap. People providing apples to be made into Churchwarden’s, what Virginia calls “joining a barrel”, receive a 20% discount off bottles of Churchwarden’s.
Virginia explains: “If people are bringing apples for Churchwarden’s they have to be sweet apples, not cookers, and they really need to bring them now, or as soon as they can!”
People bring apples from a wide area and from a variety of groups, including schools and villages. However, Virginia admits she has a soft spot for allotment holders who bring apples: “I think my favourite photograph on this year’s [personalised] labels is a woman sitting in her allotment on a sunny day looking slightly exhausted!”
