Apple Tasting Day

Apple Tasting Day

Rediscover the lost flavours from apple orchards past with historian and apple grafter, David Ramsay. Learn about their unique flavours and characteristics, as well as some of the stories behind these forgotten heritage varieties.

In Victorian Britain, you could eat an apple a day for four years and not eat the same apple twice. By the 1980s two-thirds of British orchards had disappeared, along with the diversity of flavour. Uniformly sweet, crunchy and consistently coloured apples replaced once popular varieties such as a Pomeroy of Somerset, a Bess Pool, a Hoary Morning and a Court of Wick.

Enjoy once more these long-forgotten flavours.

Introducing David:

David’s main interest is in orchards and tracking down and grafting heritage apple varieties. This began as an attempt to extend the orchard’s flowering period for his bees by finding and grafting trees at the extreme ends of the season, those varieties in pollination groups 1 and 2, and 5 and 6. This then led to the fascinating area of local heritage, the so-called heirloom, or historical apple varieties and their unique ability to adapt and thrive in this particular part of Exmoor and the South West.

This search for heritage varieties led to a conversation in 2019 in which the only known Porlock Pippin was brought to his attention, an ancient tree still growing in what was an old farmyard, now a garden. Realising that the variety was not on any national list of local cultivors, he had it confirmed through DNA sequencing, resulting in the Porlock Pippin receiving a permanent place on the UK FruitID Register.