Within East Oxford and the surrounding area enormous quantities of lovely apples go unused each autumn. Tiddly Pommes is Rupert’s experimental local micro-enterprise aiming to demonstrate that it is possible to make good use of such precious resources even if this is unfashionable in the current era of mass institutionalised waste. Trees whose crops might fall unharvested exist at a great variety of local sites and for many reasons, not least as relics of former plantations by which the old city was at one time practically surrounded. Far from being a problem, the surviving trees can offer us something special and intriguing, a characterful selection from the nation’s great abandoned apple heritage and a unique glimpse of Oxford’s past.
Tiddly Pommes had its humble origin in 2007 as a community service in East Oxford, and the idea of offering a local fruit-juicing process grew out of a background of winemaking and engineering experience. All production was achieved through the operation of a large basket press. From an initial scale of a few dozen bottles per season the operation has recently expanded; as more connections have been made the sheer scale of the quantity of good fruit going to waste in Oxford has become more apparent. In August 2016 a new ‘Pommery’ was set up in a space in Cutteslowe, North Oxford. The manual press was superseded by a fabulous modern belt press, and custom-made equipment was produced to handle the rest of the production process. We then processed 12 tons of local fruit that season and produced more than 10,000 bottles of juice.
Tiddly Pommes is still guided by its original principles. This is still about closing a local resource loop – processing local fruit so that local people can enjoy it all year round – and in the resource-constrained world of the future this is the kind of simple positive local action that we think might seem to be suggested all over the country. Our juice is not filtered and it contains no added ingredients. It is carefully pasteurised and will keep for a long time unopened. If you are in the Oxford area and have apple trees whose abundance is not fully enjoyed, or if you know others here who have, then please do be in touch. We can take the surplus fruit and return some to you as bespoke juice from your address!
www.tiddlypommes.co.uk