IN the first of a series looking at the stories of South Hams drink producers, Richard Harding visits one local cider maker.

I visited Broadleigh Farm in the beautiful countryside near Stoke Gabriel which is the home of Hunts Cider and much more besides. The trip was organised by Food Drink Devon. It is a working livestock farm and also the location of a very succesful nine-acre caravan and camping park.

The Hunt Family have been making cider in the area since 1805 and Richard is the current Head Cider Maker and along with his sister are the eighth generation of cider makers.

He explained: ‘’Originally in the early 1800s the farm was a Crab’s Park at the top of Goodrington

‘’In the 1900s we moved to Yalberton and we still farm. We have been tenants there for over a century but have moved the cider business to our own farm at Stoke Gabriel.

‘’As Torbay’s expanded over the last couple of centuries we’ve been pushed gradually further and further from the sea.’’

Richard explained the range: ‘’We do a cider for everyone, some draft ciders you can buy on tap or in bottle filtered carbonated ciders, we do so still, cloudy scrumpy ciders and we do a couple of fruit ciders as well.’’

‘’The main bulk of the apple harvest happens through October into early November.

Richard describes the process: ‘’We start by harvesting the apples when they are ripe, when there’s plenty of sugar in them, that’s when the starch is converted to sugar.

‘’We mill the apples the day after they’re harvested, press and collect the juice from them.

From a ton of apples we’ll get around 650 to 700 litres of juice.

‘’This is pumped into tanks from the press and we ferment them for three or four weeks.

‘’By the time the fermentation’s finished we’ve got a nice dry cider.

‘’We allow that to mature from between six and 12 months and when we’re happy that it’s just right we will bottle it or keg it or bag and box it.’’

We then went on a tour stopping first to see the apples in the orchards.

Richard said: ‘’For the different varieties of ciders we use different apples to achieve different ciders.

‘’We’ve got some nice local Devon aplles like Brown’s Apple, one that’s very local to us called the Paignton Marigold, one called Slop Me Gurdle, Pig Snout which have quite interesting names…

Richard’s father Tim still takes a great interest in the farm and is often to be seen at Exeter Livestock Centre carefully choosing the latest additions to their stock.

Visit: huntscider.co.uk