Going Further Afield
But on the upside we recruited some exciting new customers to the Lower Court fold!
We were asked if we could supply fruit to a location an hour North of Edinburgh and to keep the quality as prime as possible – so the challenge was to pick the apples at their optimum and get them packed and shipped as rapidly as possible to our new customer. I’m pleased to say that after harvesting on the Saturday, they were loaded on the truck at 7am on Sunday and had reached their destination by 8.30pm that evening.
The client was delighted and has made some cracking cider with them. He’s already been down to see us this year and has doubled his order.
Our next challenge was an enquiry from Canada. Following research, it was decided that the best solution would be to crush the apples and ship as juice – but how to prevent fermentation from occurring enroute? Freeze it, of course! And so I giant apple flavoured ice lolly was shipped to Canada…… (well nearly – it was actually frozen juice shipped in 1000ltr IBCs.)
Our other export enquiry, from Austria, came in right at the end of the harvest, which was unfortunately too late to organise transport but we hope to be able to supply the customer in 2019. Whilst we are on the “new business” front we were asked to supply a blend of bittersweet apples for an exciting new cider based consumer product, for which our stalwart, Michelins, made the perfect base. This much underrated apple continues to be the stalwart in many of the larger cider maker’s portfolios and we think that it deserves more attention from the craft market.