New book celebrates region's drink heritage

Ludlow Brewing Co, Wroxeter Vineyard in Shropshire, and Banks's Park Brewery in Wolverhampton all feature in the new book Britain in a Bottle, by drink experts Ted Bruning and Rupert Wheeler.

Further afield, the National Brewing Centre in Burton-upon-Trent, Marston's brewery, also in Burton, and Weston's Cider Mill in Much Marcle, near Ledbury, and Hereford Cider Museum all make it into the guide.

The launch of the book, which aims to encourage drink tourism, by promoting brewers, vineyards and distilleries which are open to the public, comes at an unfortunate time given the current lockdown, but doubtless come in handy when the restrictions are lifted.

The book describes Wroxeter Vineyard as being located in an 'eerily quiet stretch of country between Shrewsbury and Telford made all the more otherworldly by the remains of the dead Roman city of Viroconium, marooned there in the wrong century, its surface exposed as if by scratching dogs.'

It describes founder David Millington, an agricultural consultant who created in the vineyard in 1991 following a business trip to California, as 'a revered member of the Great British Awkward Squad'.

"Mr Millington spent eight years fighting the council’s ruling that winemaking, bottling and retailing were industrial activities requiring planning permission," it says.

"As the Awkward Squad so often does, he won. The vineyard has passed to his son Martin and is celebrated for its blended table wines."

It praises the vineyard for its long and informative tours, which include lunch and a complimentary bottle of wine.

It describes Banks’s Park Brewery as being not only a great monument to brewing, but also to Black Country industrial heritage.

"Founded in 1875, as soon as it had found its feet it embarked on the relentless and single-minded pursuit of growth through acquisition and merger, which climaxed when it took over Marston’s of Burton in 1999."

The book describes Burton as being 'Britain's brewing capital', and the Marston's Brewery as being 'its Tower of London'.

"Burton brewers had a head start thanks to the town’s gypsum-rich artesian wells and, thanks to regional deforestation, its maltsters were early adopters of coke in their drying kilns," it says.

The book also describes the brewery's last remaining example of a Burton Union set, a system of fermenting beer in giant oak barrels linked by a pipe.

It says Marston's determination to persevere with traditional methods during the rise of pressurised keg beers in the 1960s and 70s helped save traditional cask ales from extinction.

"Across the northern and western Midlands, none of Marston’s regional competitors – chiefly Banks’s, Greenall Whitley and Ansells – ever went all-keg because they felt they had to offer a cask alternative to Pedigree," the book says.

Bruning and Wheeler praise Ludlow Brewing Co for its commitment to the environment, with its solar panels and heat retention system.

The book mourns the decline of the Bulmer cider works in Hereford, which it says has been downgraded to just an 'outlying production unit' since brewing giant Scottish & Newcastle took it over in 2003.

But it is full of praise of the Hereford Cider Museum, which was created in a former Bulmers cider factory by ex Bulmers managing director Bertram Bulmer, Norman Weston of rival Weston's, and director of Long Ashton Research Station, John Hudson.

The book says the prime attraction of the museum is its collection of glassware.

"The Bulmer collection of early18th-century lead-crystal cider goblets, donated when Scottish and Newcastle consigned Bulmers to history, is truly exquisite, among the finest glassware on Earth, made when cider was as prized as French wine.

"It is pointless to try to describe them – you must see them and then wonder how you might contrive to steal them."

It adds that 150 varieties of craft cider are available in the gift shop.