Drought leaves 'barely any apples' to make cider

Somerset's famous cider orchards have been 'decimated' by the long summer drought, producers say. Many trees have produced no fruit at all, and others have dropped their fruit early, rotting before they ripened.

"It's gut-wrenching," says Kimberly Jones of Honey's Cider near Bath, whose orchard has produced only a 10th of its normal amount of apples.

Neil MacDonald, who manages more than 1,000 acres of Somerset orchards, says he has watched half his apples fall before they have ripened, because the trees are stressed by the drought.

"Nothing sells cider like sunshine," he says, "and we've emptied our tanks.

"The sadness is we haven't got enough fruit to refill the tanks again."

Walking through Kimberly Jones' orchard just outside Bath, it's hard to see any apples at all. The trees should be groaning with fruit, she tells me, but "we might get 10% of our normal crop here, and that's generous".

The orchard is 25 years old, and this is by far the driest year they have had. Because 2025 was also dry, the trees became stressed, she explained, and this year most have just not made fruit at all, to save their energy.

Unlike the big commercial brands, Honey's Cider is only made from fresh juice. Jones refuses to buy apple concentrate or industrial products.

"So we can only make cider from the juice we make each year, which means we will be down this year," she adds.

Ironically, the long hot summer has been "brilliant" for actually selling cider.

"Everyone likes a cold cider on a hot day, but we are struggling now to grow fruit for next year," Jones says.

On one of Somerset's most famous cider farms, I hear the same story. Gordon Rich started pressing apples on a farm near Highbridge in 1954. Today his grandson George Scott makes nearly a million litres of cider a year.

But not this year.

"We would normally harvest 20-30 tonnes of apples here," he tells me, walking through one orchard.

"There's so little fruit in here I won't even put the harvester in - the sheep can have any that drop."

Neighbouring farms that Scott buys from are also short of fruit. One grower who normally produces 200 tonnes is "down to about 30", he adds.

Will his tanks run dry then, I wondered?

"No, we've got plenty of cider in the tanks for now," he smiles. Cider makers can keep stock from year to year, but Scott says he worries about the future of his trees.

Two years of drought have already stressed them, and climate scientists are warning farmers to expect more hot dry summers.

"I do worry that next year will show a lot more signs of the drought and the trees will be stressed again. If we get another dry year, I don't know what we're going to do," he adds.

Not every orchard is bare, of course. Neil MacDonald manages more than 1,000 acres of cider orchards across Somerset. At his Orchard Park Farm, near Shepton Mallet, I see plenty of apples - both on the trees and on the ground.

With a roar, the apple harvester starts up. It powers down the rows, sweeping up the apples under the trees, up and away into the trailer.

This is at least three weeks' early for harvest, but they are not picking up the fruit to make cider.

"All these apples will go on the compost heap," MacDonald tells me, ruefully.

He cuts one open to show me the inside, mottled brown and floury.

"It's unripe, but it's already rotted before we've even started," he explains.

"The trees are stressed without any water, so they've just dumped the fruit on the ground to save themselves."

The harvester sweeps along, filling a large trailer with cider apples that Neil and his team have spent all year trying to grow, only to throw away.

"We've probably lost about half the crop this way," he says.

"This should be a 20-tonne orchard. If I get 10 tonnes from it I'll be grateful."

Somerset's cider apple growers know this is not a freak year.

"What we used to think of as extreme weather, we increasingly consider as normal." says Mike Kendon, a climate scientist at the Met Office.

But what can an apple grower do about it?

Neil MacDonald is now watering newly planted trees.

"Five years ago you would just dig a good hole and leave nature to get on with it," he smiles.

"Now you can't get away with that, you have to irrigate young trees or they die."

But irrigation for hundreds of acres of cider orchards is "just not viable", he said. Farmers who grow eating apples for supermarkets command higher prices for their fruit, so traditionally they have invested in irrigation systems.

Cider growers are now having to rethink their calculations.

Most fundamentally of all, climate change may actually change the taste of West Country cider.

One of the main varieties that gives Somerset cider its bittersweet taste is Dabinett. Several growers have found these trees producing very few apples this year, not because of the drought, but the mild winter.

"Dabinett needs a cold snap," MacDonald explains. "We just didn't get the cold winter days this year or last, so it's not producing."

He is now grafting other varieties onto his Dabinett trees, plants that fare better in hot dry weather.

As our climate changes, the very taste of Somerset cider may change too.

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