A rare week’s visit from grandson Ian – 23 years old, 6 ft 4 in. tall, manic computer gamer, trawler of popular music’s extremities. I expose him to Billy Bragg singing The International but he prefers one of my more obscure CD tracks - an anonymous choir doing Bandiera Rossa accompanied by a thousand bagpipes. Let’s put him down as inclining leftwards then. His pallor decrees something out-of-doors and we visit Hereford’s cider museum.As proclaimed I respond to technology but it’s thin on the ground in cider-making. There’s a press, a bottle-washing machine and… well, that’s about it. To ensure Ian gets full value for his £3.50 ticket (as a person of advanced age mine costs £3) we are reduced to reading the info placards in some detail. It seems cider-making lacks mystique.
Industries create mystique by enshrouding themselves in jargon. But prolonged contact with apples rots the imagination. The press is called – dully – a press. Later, in an over-long explanation about reducing cloudiness, there’s a line drawing of a slightly tilted barrel on a rack. The caption reveals this process is known as “racking”.
Jargon is the route to greater earnings: think of doctors, lawyers, computer manufacturers and roof-thatchers. If cider is to prosper it must ape oenology with its vinification, maceration and its heavy dependence on French words. Since Hereford is close to the Principality Welsh words would raise obfuscation levels. Other than that… ah yes, more publicity for an aperitif (called inevitably, Apple Aperitif) bought at the museum’s gift shop. Il vaut le voyage but not if you live in, say, Prague.
