A Herefordshire smallholding that set out to make organic cider.

Dunkertons began with a single pressing. Susie Dunkerton, writing for the Hereford engineering college NMITE in 2020, said that she and her husband Ivor Dunkerton pressed their first cider apples at Hays Head near Pembridge, Herefordshire, in October 1980. The cider makers’ trade body, the National Association of Cider Makers, gave the same year when it wrote about the company in 2019, and the provenance network Happerley said in 2016 that the business had been making organic cider and perry since 1980, started by the couple to make farmhouse cider more widely available.

The organic commitment came almost at once. Susie Dunkerton wrote that the couple joined the Soil Association, the British organic certification body, in 1981, when there was only one cider apple tree on their 30 acres. Her account of the early years is a list of hard physical work: shovelling apples to be washed, building up “cheeses” of pulp wrapped in cloths, wheeling trolleys on to a hydraulic press from the 1940s, and bottling and corking by hand, with labelled bottles drying off in the family kitchen.

The range grew around blends and single varieties. Happerley reported in 2016 that a Dunkertons blend could contain anywhere from three to twelve or more apple varieties, while the single-variety ciders carry the name of the fruit they are made from, such as Breakwells Seedling, Browns and Court Royal. Another name in the range is Black Fox, a cider Happerley also mentioned by name in its 2016 profile of the company.

From Pembridge to Dowdeswell Park.

The second generation took over in the mid-2010s. Happerley reported in August 2016 that Ivor and Susie Dunkerton had retired and that the business had passed in 2015 to their son Julian Dunkerton, with Jeremy Benson as managing director; English Wikipedia, citing Cotswold Life, says Julian took control of the family cider company in 2014. Julian Dunkerton is better known as a co-founder of the fashion brand Superdry, and Wikipedia describes the cider business as founded and run by his father Ivor and stepmother Susie.

The move out of Herefordshire followed. Happerley wrote in August 2016 that the company was relocating to Gloucestershire that September, and English Wikipedia dates the move to 2016; Susie Dunkerton’s own account puts the closing of the Pembridge mill in 2017, when production moved to just outside Cheltenham under Julian’s ownership, with day-to-day oversight by Jeremy “Bean” Benson. The new home is Dowdeswell Park, near Charlton Kings, beside the Dowdeswell Reservoir on the A40, according to Punchline Gloucester. She added that the whole process, from juice through fermentation to finished cider and perry, continued to be covered by Soil Association standards.

The move was marked publicly in August 2018. Punchline Gloucester reported on the opening of the cidery’s shop at Dowdeswell Park, an event that celebrated the official relocation from Pembridge and 30 years of Soil Association certification and honoured Ivor and Susie Dunkerton as the founders. Benson described a shop where visitors could sample the ciders, buy from the barrel and book tours, and Julian Dunkerton said the move would support new ciders and exports to further overseas markets. The paper also reported that the company sponsors the People’s Trust for Endangered Species.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are cider and alcohol-free drinks names: Old Mout, Dunkertons, Sheppy’s, Henney’s, Ceder’s, Big Drop and Lucky Saint. Four are ciders, and three were built around drinks without alcohol: an alcohol-free alternative to gin and two alcohol-free beers. Brands like these sit at many different points in the trade, from family cider makers that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and to young companies started to fill a gap on the shelf.

A cider or an alcohol-free drink is usually recognised less by what is in the glass than by a label, a name and the place or story it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or had its drinks made by someone else from the start. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its drinks are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its drinks are made and how its labels and cans have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A family label, redrawn in 2019.

The labels were rethought in 2019. The National Association of Cider Makers reported in July that year that Dunkertons had launched new packaging with embossed labels, tactile inks, gold foils and new neck labels, and back labels carrying tasting notes and a food pairing for each cider. The packs also added a scale for sweetness, acidity and tannins. Julian Dunkerton, described as co-owner, said the ciders and perry had a strong following “but we knew the brand presentation required a complete refresh.”

The same launch brought Craft, a 5% ABV cider sold in a 500ml bottle and a 330ml can, the company’s first in that format. Punchline Gloucester covered its launch at Dowdeswell in July 2019 and described the label as bold orange print on a dark blue ground, carrying all the hallmarks of the Dunkertons branding. Benson told the paper that Craft used the house blend with some Foxwhelp apples added to make it drier and more acidic, and that Julian Dunkerton had been heavily involved in the branding. FoodBev, reporting on Craft in November 2019, quoted Benson as co-owner and said the company describes its cider as made without concentrates or chemicals.

The family name reaches beyond cider. Julian Dunkerton’s other businesses include Superdry and the Lucky Onion hotel group, whose head chef provided the organic food at the 2018 opening at Dowdeswell Park, Punchline Gloucester reported.

For a design guide, Dunkertons shows how a farmhouse cider can keep its founders’ organic principle while a second generation redraws the label around embossing, foil and a navy-and-orange code. Compare Westons, the family cider maker of Much Marcle, Herefordshire, and Old Mout, the New Zealand fruit cider now also made in Hereford. For this guide we use label navy, fox orange and foil gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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