Making cider is a relatively simple process. It starts with the selection of genuine cider apple varieties, the juice of which, when blended, will give a good balance of flavour, acid, tannin and sugar to start with. At Henney’s, the preference is to use a selection of Dabinett, Ashton Bitter, Tremletts Bitter and Yarlington Mill with a small proportion of Bramley. The fruit is chosen from Herefordshire growers and comes from both traditional ‘standard’ orchards and more modern ‘bush’ orchards.

When delivered to the mill in the autumn, the fruit is first washed and any orchard debris and rotten apples removed. Then it is milled into a consistency similar to that of pie filling and pumped into a large hydraulic press. The juice is extracted and pumped into holding tanks; the dry matter that remains is taken away to become cattle feed.

The freshly pressed juice is dosed with a small amount of sulphite to inhibit the growth of wild yeast and to help preserve the finished cider in storage.
If the natural level of malic acid is low, powdered malic acid is added to help balance and preservation. The juice stands for about 12 hours, after which a cultivated Champagne yeast is added. It is then pumped into fermentation tanks where it is left for several weeks until all the sugar has fermented to alcohol. The juice is then separated from the spent yeast residue and held in tanks for at least four months to mature.

When mature, the cider is ready for bottling. First it is tested for alcohol; on an average year the alcohol will be somewhere between 6% and 7% by volume. Unlike many makers, Henney’s do not add fermenting sugars to the fresh juice or use concentrated juice. This means that the declared alcohol of 6% can be achieved with the minimum of dilution or none at all. The cider is taken in tanks to the bottlers, where it is filtered into tanks for chilling down and carbonating. Once the bottles are filled and sealed they pass through a steam tunnel for pasteurisation and then on to be labelled and packed ready for sale.