Super cool agritourism initiative/map: Somerset Cider & Apple Juice, UK

For those of us with Verizon FIOS tv service, one of the channels is Veria, and it runs a show called "Under the Sun," where the host, Nathan LeRoy, travels around the world to various heritage-sustainable agricultural areas.  The shows are always interesting.

One of the programs was on cider and "perry"--cider made from pears--in the UK.  So when I saw this article, "On the trail of cider house jewels," in the Financial Times Weekend section on cider in Somerset, I was primed to read the story. 

The article discusses how the local tourism board, Visit Somerset has created a "Cider Trail" and an accompanying  brochure so I checked it out.  From the FT article:

Still, it has become easier to navigate from one cider farm to the next. A new map, produced by James Crowden, a historian and cider expert, highlights 30 of the region’s best small-scale, artisan cider farms, all of which welcome visitors and sell from the farm gate. “The idea is for people to spend a few days in ciderland and remember a time when life was less intense,” Crowden tells me. “The map is the English equivalent of the French wine trail.”

The map-brochure is fabulous. It was produced by James Crowden and Nell Barrington, with design by Andrew Crane.

Not only does it list the various orchards that you can visit, it includes information on orcharding and the process of producing cider over the course of an entire year, and it has a section on the history of the industry: a historical timeline; glossary; lists of other resources including books and online resources, and pictures and descriptions of the common varieties of apple grown in Somerset for cider production--I learned from "Under the Sun" that regular apples don't work well for cider.

This is a great example of best practice for local and regional foodways and tourism initiatives.

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Thank you to Nell Barrington for providing me with a printed copy of the brochure.

... on to England.