Craft & innovation: thoughts on our future

When did you last think deeply about your ideas? I was doing it today and realised that even though we create them, they define us.

In the light of the Cider Trends Summit that took place in Bristol last week, a first for the UK, I found myself musing on the future of UK Cider from a craft point of view. The pressure to innovate facing the marketeers at the industrial end of the cider market was obvious early on that day. Their main advantage (other than actually having a marketing department) is their size, which allows them to compete in terms of quantity making their products cheap. Which left me thinking, OK- so whats going to happen at the other end of the scale? Small cidermakers were somewhat inconspicuous at the summit (something I hope the organisers will make efforts to improve next year) and my thoughts turned to them, and their ideas. How will they respond? I remember Christian Drouin telling me last year: "We shouldn't even try to compete on cost. Its much better to focus on quality" and thats probably the best place to start.

Classically, innovation is done as a response to a need. Assuming that is correct, as a craft producer, what are the needs you face and where do you invest that quality?

The answer is different for each producer and may be as basic as reviving an old tradition, such as keeving (that results in a naturally sweeter cider) or even something as simple and banal as serving 'over ice'. Wether you agree with either practice or not is besides the point - these ideas both invigorate our market to a greater or lesser degree. With regards to the bandwagon, lesser mortals will always jump on but its only ever a short term fix and original ideas will always last longer. When Peter copies Paul, their shared marketplace becomes more homogenised and less interesting. If that continues for long enough, the consumer becomes accustomed to it and we have a less interesting 'norm' with lower expectations and discerning drinkers will respond by looking elsewhere, shrinking the market and increasing competition further. The people who copy what everyone else is doing only encourage our cider market achieve less than it potential, and none of us want that! So new ideas are important to keep the market diverse and interesting. The responsibility for that lies with both marketeers and artisan producers.

If I can use Once Upon A Tree as an example, winemaker turned cidermaker Simon Day has only been selling cider since 2008, but his idea to start making Ice Cider (really, really well I might add) before anyone else in the UK allowed him to stand alone - he's been winning accolades ever since.

OK - so where do we get the ideas? They can come from anywhere, it doesn't matter, so long as they come. Personally - I get excited by looking at what other cider cultures survive on and whats challenging their 'norm'. Two key areas that interest me are influence from wine and demand from beer.

I'm constantly blown away by the mindset producers in the US have: its so open, those guys will try anything because they know its better to try and fail than to not try at all. Many successful things only exist because someone was brave enough to give it a go in the first place. As explored this week in the BBC's Radio 4 Food Programme, the idea of hops in cider isn't one that would sit comfortably with the majority cider drinkers in the UK, but when done properly, it works surprisingly well. That particular influence coming from their regional praxis of growing hops for beer. Cider here in UK is much like that of our Norman neighbours, it bears the yoke of tradition on its shoulders and is consequently a more difficult place to introduce new ideas -but it doesn't mean we can't. When Domaine Dupont was asked to produce something new for the American market by their distributors they come up with a Triple fermented cider (taking another influence from beer, but this time in Belgium) and also a Calvados barrel aged cider.

Foreign influence is a valuable source of ideas and export markets are currently being throughly explored around the world. Whilst they are there, I just hope they're looking beyond their own products because I'm hoping import will be just as strong a trend; we'd all benefit from that either as a producer or a consumer. Sadly, even though foreign cider is a valid product here, there's no real sign of an increase in availability here yet. Rather than competing with British products, it could really invigorate our own market at a point when sales are beginning to plateau.

Australasia has booming cider scene with some in the wine industry making cider for the beer industry to package up and sell on. That relationship has its own influence such as the use of the Moscato process for cider production, an influence taken directly from the winemakers themselves.

Many of our closest neighbours in Europe make cider one way or another and all of them would find a home here stylistically. Even the challenging northern Spanish sidra is a style I think we will see more of soon, although not neccesarily from Spain. It's a style that intrigues people enough to want to try and make their own version, something already underway here in UK and also in USA.

So whatever we do for a living, who would we be if we didn't try to make it better? Why replicate when you can innovate? Whatever you do, be original.