Herefordshire cider makers Tom Tibbits and Lydia Crimp of Artistraw are to feature on the BBC flagship show Countryfile, which will air on 12th October at 17:15.

The episode, called ‘A Tale of Two Ciders’ will feature presenter Adam Henson visiting the husband and wife team, whilst Charlotte Smith visits another Herefordshire producer at the more industrial end of the cider making scale. The episode will focus on how production at different scales shapes the countryside, our wallets and the future of this much-loved drink.

Adam Henson gamely donned a pair of Artistraw Cider’s iconic yellow dungarees and joined Tom and Lydia in Duffryn orchard to help hand-pick some very rare Knotted kernel apples from a beautiful 90 year old tree. Later in the day Adam got stuck in helping press some fruit on Tom and Lydia’s eccentric vintage French travelling apple press.

After a long day of cider making Adam was treated to a glass of a sparkling Artistraw cider called ‘Flock’. As the cork popped, Adam was very complimentary about Lydia’s painting of orchard birds which adorns the label, before delighting at the deliciousness of the cider.

Tom Tibbits said: “We hope that appearing on this episode of Countryfile will help to shine a light on the craft and mystery of natural cider making and lay bare the differences between the full juice, small batch wine-like drinks that we make here at Artistraw and routinely diluted cider made at an industrial scale.”

The legal definition of cider in the UK stipulates that cider need only contain 35% apple juice. The other 65% of ingredients typically will include water, sugar, malic acid and sodium metabisulphite, alongside permitted colours, flavours and preservatives.

Frustratingly for pure juice cider producers like Artistraw there isn’tt a universal legal requirement to list all ingredients on cider labels in the UK for alcoholic beverages over 1.2% ABV meaning that should they wish to, producers can legally get away with calling something that is majority added water by the name cider.

Tibbits continued: “One the one hand the government is subsidising landowners to avoid further grubbing up of old orchards, which leads to losses of critical habitat for farmland biodiversity, yet on the other hand the alcohol taxation system encourages cider makers to dilute their product and sharply reduce demand for the very things that orchards produce: apples. It’s little wonder that apples are not a particularly profitable crop for farmers when they can be substituted with much cheaper water at a rate of 2:1. The legal definition of British cider is long overdue a review, if only for the farmers’ sake!”

Tom and Lydia are proud to have an ingredient list on every batch of cider they produce. Whilst it couldn’t be any shorter, containing one single ingredient: apples; they believe it is important that consumers of their drinks know exactly what is (and isn’t!) going into them.

Lydia Crimp said “Whilst our drinks will never be able to compete on price with the mass produced end of the industry, we believe the money you pay for our cider is justified and even very reasonable given the amount of time and back breaking work we pour into each bottle! Our ciders will always be made solely from fruit handpicked by Tom and I from ancient, unsprayed, biodiverse orchards. We’ve no interest in trying to turn our myriad different varieties into one predictable product. When you drink our cider, you’re tasting one of a handful of bottles created from the fruit from maybe a single tree, or perhaps an orchard blend. It’s a snapshot of a single season in that orchard’s life; a measure of how much rain the trees roots received and the reflection of warm sunshine that kissed a blush onto the skin of the fruit.”