As another year draws to a close, we’ve been reflecting on the past twelve months, raising a glass to some great achievements and looking forward to the year ahead. Here’s a little insight into the highlights of 2025.
Award Wins
It has been another fantastic year for awards with our new non-alcoholic cider, Red Zero, leading the way. Less than twelve months after we launched it, it was named Best Non-Alcoholic Cider at the World Cider Awards, adding to gold awards from Taste of the West and The Farm Shop and Deli Awards and Best New Drink Award from Food Drink Devon. We took our time creating Red Zero because we like to do things properly at Sandford Orchards. It was not the first non-alcoholic cider to market but we like to think that it is one of the best and it seems that the experts agree. Winning these awards recognises all the hard work and effort we put into making Red Zero and puts it firmly on the global cider map as the best in the world!
Perfect Pears
It is always exciting to launch new products and this year we had three! Our 2024 Vintage Perry was a lovely surprise addition to the range. Barny planted a small perry orchard on a friend’s farm 15 years ago and completely forgot about it. Then last autumn we harvested our first substantial crop and created a delicate floral perry that is crisp, fragrant and fresh with ripe pear, citrus acidity and a subtle tropical nose. It is a lovely alternative to a glass of wine and pairs perfectly with roasted chicken, creamy pasta or grilled fish.
Collaboration Ciders
Our first collaboration cider of the year was created with Somerset’s Ganley & Naish as part of their prize for winning the Breakthrough Cider Makers Awards 2023. The new limited edition High Tides Cider was crafted from a blend of wild-fermented early bittersweets and Browns apples and married the signature characteristics of Ganley & Naish and Sandford Orchards to create a beautifully balanced cider.
The second collaboration of the year was with Ben Collins, formerly known as The Stig. Using a centuries-old, single screw, Devon straw press, Ben and Barny hand-pressed apples from an ancient orchard at Prowse Farm. The result of their labours is Sandford Orchards X Ben’s Cider 2024 Vintage Straw Pressed Fine Cider, a spectacular cider with a burgundy hue and notes of grapefruit and melon running through a classic Devonian bittersweet farmhouse blend. If you haven’t already tried one of these new ciders, you might want to add them to your Christmas list!
New Listings
We love to share the joy of our fabulous cider with as many people as possible and putting it on the shelves of supermarkets and high street stores helps us to reach those people not lucky enough to have had the pleasure of our wares yet. This year we have celebrated some major milestones in that direction. Firstly, Red Zero appeared in Morrisons, then John Lewis started stocking our gift packs and now Tesco is putting Devon Red in its stores across the South West, making it even easier to get your hands on our award winning cider.
Sandford Orchards Everywhere
It is probably no coincidence that these new listings have arisen in a year when we have been featured widely across TV, radio, papers, magazines, billboards and buses. Our Right Cider Life multimedia campaign raised our profile with outdoor, digital and in store activity across the country. Meanwhile, our ciders were featured on ITV’s Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh and in The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Sun, Olive Magazine and Woman & Home, to name a few. Plus Barny was interviewed by BBC News, Radio 4, The Times and more.
Bumper Harvest
The other big highlight of the year has been a record-breaking harvest. The biggest we have ever witnessed. A mild spring, and the sunniest summer for some time, left our trees groaning under the weight of fruit, around a third more than last year. The apples ripened ahead of schedule, due to the lovely sunny weather, and were already beginning to drop in late August. To cope with the extra fruit, we invested in eight new tanks to increase our capacity by 400,000 litres and we pressed apples 6 days a week from 5am until 9pm to keep on top of apple deliveries!
Looking Forward to 2026
The bumper crop this year comes with the challenge of having a lot more cider to sell next year but we are definitely glass half full (of cider) type of people and the way we see it, a lot more cider means a lot more people discovering our fabulous apple nectar (and our supermarket listings have made them easier to access too). Plus we’ve had an abundance of rare apple breeds in 2025 so we’ll be able to do some really interesting small batch blends and single variety ciders over the coming months. All of this means that 2026 promises to be a very exciting year on the cider front! Watch this space!!
