Day's Cottage

Day's Cottage is a cider, perry, and apple juice producer on Helen Brent-Smith's family farm at Brookthorpe, run by Helen and her partner Dave. Some of the twenty acres of orchard were planted by Helen's great-aunt Lucy in 1912, and the couple have since added a Gloucestershire Museum Orchard holding around eighty apple and pear varieties native to the county. Cider is pressed from varieties including Kingston Black and Pedington Brandy apples, and perry from Brandy pears, fermented with wild yeast from unsprayed trees rather than cultivated strains, which the couple treat as an inexact process rather than a fixed recipe. In 2014 they blended a commemorative cider, Rosie's Kiss, from a hundred different varieties. Juice and cider are sold direct from the farm by arrangement and at Stroud Farmers' Market.