We're over the moon to have just wrapped up our collab with Martin and the team at Pilton, facilitated by Cider Cupid, podcaster extraordinaire and Clapton Craft alumni Martyn Goodwin-Sharman. Our Thomas has written up a pretty belting diary of the day, including some beautiful pictures of the Somerset setting. In it we deliberated our blend and bottle, all while eating a frankly ludicrous amount of cheese, washed down with some of the best Cider in the world right now.

The day started bright and early with a meetup of the Clapton Craft crew, fuelled by some questionable service station coffee we began a 7am crawl along the North Circular to escape the Big Smoke for the crisp clear West Country air, and once we managed to squeeze our way out of the London traffic we were flying. Enjoying a picturesque drive through the English countryside passing World Heritage sites such as Stonehenge and Longleat Safari Park we soon arrived at our destination, Pilton Cider, nestled outside the Mendip Hills in the charming Market Town of Shepton Mallet.

Pilton are artisanal juice slingers specialising in producing sparkling Keeved cider. A very traditional, old English method of making naturally sweetened cider, using only cider apples and nothing else; no sugar, no water, it’s the real deal, through and through.

Explained perfectly by Pilton themselves:

“The keeving process involves the formation of a pectin gel, which floats to the top of fresh pressed apple juice in translucent tanks. The gel traps nitrogen and is removed. Starved of its essential nutrients, the wild yeast fermentation stops early, leaving natural sugars from the apples themselves to sweeten the cider.

We bottle our keeved cider when it is still slowly fermenting, and allow it to develop its own natural tiny-bubble sparkle. Apples are collected from traditional cider orchards in and around the parish of Pilton and slowly fermented for six months in our cool Victorian cellar before bottling.”

On arrival we were met by Martin Berkeley, owner and head cider boi of Pilton, alongside Apple Nerd Supreme and Clapton Craft alumni - Martyn Goodwin-Sharman who guided us through the collab blend. We’ve wanted to do a cider here at CC for a while and knew we were in safe hands with these guys, Martin has been running Pilton for a good decade now and Martyn lives and breathes cider, writing and speaking extensively on the subject as the co-host of the fabulous Cider Centric podcast Neutral Cider Hotel.

We hit the ground running and were shown straight into the Barrel store where all the magic happens, while enabling us to taste from a multitude of barrels to get a sense of what ciders we wanted our blend to consist of. We tasted EVERYTHING (it’s a hard job sometimes....), cider aged in Rum barrels, Cider aged in Tequila barrels, Cider aged in Yonder Loop barrels (a range of seasonal mixed fermentation beers, aged in oak and blended with locally foraged ingredients), and many more we can’t quite remember. But a firm favourite was Pilton’s OG keeved, as well as a cheeky, vibrant Blackcurrant wine. Having assessed all the individual components, we decided upon our final blend, something we’ll keep a secret for now - but rest assured, this stuff will be the soundtrack of the summer!

After the blending we headed into the bottle store to discuss what style of bottle we’d like our creation to be housed in, along with bouncing around ideas for the label and what we should name it. Once all our creativity had been exhausted we decided it was time for some lunch, Martin suggested we head to an Orchard he knew that was tucked away. So we raided Pilton’s extensive back catalogue of Sidré, grabbed some fresh, crusty Sourdough and headed into the woods with our Cooler box filled to the brim with a frankly embarrassing amount of Cheeses and cold-cuts for a good old fashioned picnic.

Cider was drunk.

Cheese was eaten.

Naps were had.

Ultimately, home time was calling, so we begrudgingly hopped in the car and began the cruise back. A big thanks for Will taking one for the team and being our designated driver, and of course hats off to Martin & Martyn for being such gracious hosts and sharing all their expertise with us.

As they say in the West Country, it were Gurt Lush.

And, of course - stay tuned for the release date and our big reveal!

Blackcurrants & Blending: Our Pilton Collab Preview!