Mike Pearson

UK

Mike Pearson's fresh, craft ciders are bursting with purity and refinement.

  • Mike Pearson is the multi-award winning head cider maker at his small-batch, craft cider company. Located on the foot of the Malvern Hill, life wasn't always shiny apples and beautiful English countryside. It looks Mike 25 years working a boring city job, insuring oil rigs and refineries, to discover his true calling. In 2013 Pearson's Cider was born.
  • In no time, Mike quickly went from wanting to produce something tangible that others can enjoy to scaling up production. Still very much a small-batch cider maker, Mike has turned the tables on mass-produced ciders, by crafting ciders with subtle tannins, gentle acidity and just a hint of sweetness. His fresh and vibrant style has won him multiple awards, including Best cider three years in a row at Cotswold Life Food and Drinks Awards.
  • If there's an apple Mike wouldn't eat, he won't add it to the batch. Using a mix of vintage quality bittersweet and bitter sharp cider apples, he can tell you down to the last branch, from where the apple comes. Mike is preserver and keeper of the cider making knowledge and practices that have existed in his home county of  Gloucestershire for hundreds of years.

Mike Pearson's Location

Mike's Story

I wanted to preserve the cider making knowledge and practices that have existed in my home county of Gloucestershire for hundreds of years and also wanted produce something tangible that other people could enjoy.

I love everything about my job! There is a huge variety of jobs to be done from careful addition and monitoring (pampering) of yeast when we introduce it to our freshly pressed juice to meeting our customers while we are out delivering.

For our cider, ee only use fresh pressed juice from vintage quality cider apples and carefully selected yeasts that, when we blend our cider, produce our characteristic ciders. We love making all of ciders but the skill involved in making a well crafted still dry cider is our favourite challenge. Subtle tannins, gentle acidity and just a hint of sweetness.

We have been pretty lucky and only ever lost a couple of tanks of cider. It's heart breaking to have to pour it away, but you can always learn a lesson and improve next time. Fortunately it hasn't happened for a good while.  

My most memorable moment in my career was the first batch of commercial cider we ever made. The scaling up from small volumes to, at what the time for us, were enormous 1,000 litre tanks. The thrill of watching and nursing it through fermentation and the all too frequent checking after it had been racked off and left to mature.