Rare Vintage Cider / Modern Cooker
 
1700’s Baccamore Farm, Plympton St Mary, South Devon, UK
 
Self-Sterile (needs a pollinator)
 
Late Harvester – November (stores until Easter)
 
Large, flat cooking apple with a thick scarlet wash & a lovely plum bloom all over when ripe. Its flesh is creamy, crisp & rather tart with a slight aromatic perfume on the nose.
 
This tree started life as a much loved cider apple in the historical village of Plympton St. Mary (now a district of Plymouth) where in 1700’s the legend has it that the local monks found this apple at Backamore Farm (in what was a much more rural Plympton St. Mary) & took cutting back to the priory with them. Locally it was much heralded but now sadly rather obscure & slowing getting lost to time. Which is a crying shame as in 1753, the gentlemen Hugh Stafford Esq. of Pynes, was almost waxing lyrical about 'Baccaamores' qualities in his book ‘A Treatise of Cider-making’.
 
The juice is deep, tart which a hint of bitterness creating a really lively, full-bodied cider. If you prefer a more genteel flavour than is worth storing for a few months where the flavours mature & become more rounded & a great deal sweeter. It was also used in Christmas tarts or as a 'sweetmeat'. In Devon, a ‘sweetmeat’ was  the term for baking a whole apple with an old iron on top so as to collapse & slightly stew in the apple in cooking process.This resulted in a deliciously baked apple with an almost quince flavour. Traditionally served straight from the oven & perfectly paired with clotted cream as Devon is well known for.
 
Recently however people have found a new purpose as a cooking apple but strangely have overlooked its original purpose as a cider apple. Maybe a revival is on the cards?
As with most cider apple trees (& this one certainly not being an exception) Baccamore is a very vigorous, prolific, annually bearing tree which will freely utilise all the space it is given. Fortunately however there seems to of developed quite a useful tendency to develop a centre leading trunk making harvesting a great deal simpler definitely a queen of any orchard or garden.