Hardy, cheery, devoted and dotty — there’s a lot to like about the Gloucester Old Spot. But when Andrew Quinan bought a smallholding in Gloucester in 2003 to keep some of these pigs, he never knew that they would bring him a runaway business success.
“The smallholding came with an orchard, and I didn’t know what to do with the apples,” says Quinan, 46. “We had a pig roast party and I made cider and apple juice. A guy there said that if I bottled some, he’d sell it in his shop.”
Quinan, first a Marine then a dentist, knew nothing about making cider. He found himself making more and more in his shed with his friend Neil Macdonald.
“If someone had said to me ten years ago that I’d be a cider maker, I’d have said dream on. But we read books and internet articles, and it just grew,” Quinan says. “We got up to 25,000 bottles and found we were spending all of our downtime making cider. So in 2007, we went to the bank and turned it into a business.”
They named their business after their beloved herd of pigs, a breed that is also known as the Orchard Pig after the folk tale that the pigs’ spots are bruises caused by apples falling from the trees.
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This year, the Orchard Pig is expected to sell a million drinks to farm shops, delis, bars and pubs across Bristol and Bath, as well as to regional Waitrose stores and through the website. Macdonald, an experienced farmer, looks after the orchards and apples until they are bottled. Quinan handles the business side of things, but still loves to dream up the recipes and new products.
Quinan describes his cider as being similar to those of northern France. “We make it in the same way as raw scrumpys but we finish it so that it’s slightly softer, and very clean and fresh. People tend to say: ‘I don’t like cider, but I do like that’.”
Alongside the hard stuff, the Orchard Pig also sells a lot of fruit juices. These are made without artificial sweeteners or flavourings. “My favourite right now is our sparkling apple and ginger juice, which we launched last year at the Glastonbury Festival,” says Quinan. “It’s infused with raw ginger and goes brilliantly with dark rum.”
Quinan and Macdonald have opened a sister company, Orchard Ground Force, to plant and maintain orchards locally. The company runs workshops to show others how to care for fruit trees.
“We’ve planted 33,000 fruit trees in Somerset,” says Quinan proudly. “And we organise school visits so children can learn how everything works.”
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The Orchard Pig will be at Glastonbury this weekend, selling their juices — including the new cranberry juice, named The Bloody Good Pig — to slake the thirst of revellers.