Well .. Jim’s reminded me that i set up a blog section to the website, but failed spectacularly to make any use of it, so here goes my first (ever) blog ..
2025 was a bumper harvest for 99Pines in many ways .. it was a high cropping year .. a real vintage perry year (although it was also super dry, so a lot of the fruit was pretty small). Also .. it’s our first year with Community Interest Company (CiC) status. So what, i hear you cry! Well … the penny dropped pre-harvest, that as a CiC, we’re a community project, which means ……… we qualify for Volunteering Leave / Team Building venues for local / national companies. Tapping into this means a significant uplift in harvest helpers. Focusing the core of the harvest over 2 weeks (last week Sept & first week of Oct) and being a bit organised meant that we had teams of volunteers every day, including allotment communities, Lloyds Bank mortgage team (thank you ladies!) and the civil service, amongst others! Huge thanks also to Green Farm Seeds and Tydeman Contracting for generously lending us trucks and vans over the 2 weeks.
Our volunteer days started with a coffee and chat, before heading off for a couple of hours of picking .. either in the relatively new National Perry Collection orchards (Hartpury and Malvern) or one of the stunning heritage orchards that we’re luckily enough to have access to (including a new corker in Welland). After we’d filled the van we headed back to Hartpury, nominated someone for BBQ duties and cracked on with pressing. By the end of the day we’d end up with a fresh batch of juice and washed everything down ready to start again in the morning. This was an awesome couple of weeks .. the help was a game changer and it was great fun to meet and get involved with so many new faces and make links with local companies.
As a result .. we increased our harvest volumes from approx 1200 litres in 2024 to nearly 4000 in 2025, with over 30 single perry varieties and numerous blends! I’m pretty sure there’s not many others out there lucky enough to have access to this many varieties, so im excited to see how they all turn out .. especially some of the more unknown rare varieties!