Another great year at the Powerstock Cider Festival. Twenty seven cider makers from near and far came to join in the fun on Saturday at Powerstock village Hall, known as the Hut. It is always great to see old friends again and discuss the current happenings in the cider world.
It was also good to welcome a few newcomers, Tutts Clump from West Berkshire, Marshwood Vale Cider and Matt Walkey both from Dorset. This year saw a new catergory in the afternoon competition for a bottle conditioned class. This also meant that we held our first international competition with an entry from our old French friend Michel who joins us from Normandy every year with his wife Marie-Anne.
The weather, as is almost traditional, joined us for the evening in a lightly dampening way although there wasn’t the heavy rain of last year. Fortunately the Hut had purchased another 6m x 3m canopy this year so most ‘festivalers’ were able to remain dry and cosey for the evening. Once again Skimmety Hitchers provided fantastic entertainment with their cider songs and general enthusiasm for life – and drinking cider! They really do desrve an award from the industry for the promotion of the real stuff. As usual by about 8.o’clock it was impossible to fall over in the Hut, with shoulder to shoulder cider tasting and lots of interesting and varied comments concerning the approval or disapproval of the many ciders on offer. Everyone has their favourites and over 100gallons disapeared in small tasting beakers during the evening.
By 11.30 the last of a very happy and slightly wobbly bunch of cider enthusiasts were wending their way back to Bridport, happy in their efforts at promoting real cider and raising over £4,000.00 for good causes at the same time. The distribution of this fantastic sum will be posted later.
