Cideries and Meaderies Editing and Proofreading Services

Six weeks after a bottling, a retailer asks whether the batch on their shelf is the one from the orchard the label names. The answer exists somewhere — in a press log, a tank sheet, a blending note on the back of an envelope, and a bottling record with a different code on it. Reconstructing the chain takes an afternoon, and the whole point of a batch code is that it should take a minute.

We edit what cideries and meaderies produce — production and blending records, batch coding schemes and traceability documentation, back label and product description copy within the constraints that apply, orchard and supplier agreements, cellar door and tasting room material, trade sell sheets and distributor documentation, competition entries, and business and licensing paperwork. Our editors work on records that connect a bottle back to the fruit.

The blend sheet and its batch coding is where a cidery's provenance claims are either evidenced or hoped for, and its failure is a record that describes the blend without tying it to identifiable material. A single-orchard claim is worth nothing that a bottle cannot be traced to. We work through these so each press run is given an identifier at the press rather than later, with the fruit, its source, the pressing date and the volume, since a run identified retrospectively is identified from memory; so the blend is recorded as component volumes with their run identifiers and the proportions they contributed, because "mostly the Kingston Black" is not a record; so any addition made after blending — juice, water, sugar, sulphite, keeving or back-sweetening material — is logged with quantity and date, given that these are what a claim on the label has to be consistent with; so the vessel history is recorded so that a tank's previous contents and any topping up are visible; so the bottling record ties the batch code on the glass to the blend and the fill date, and the coding scheme is written down so it survives the person who invented it; so the retained samples are stored against the same code; and so the label claims are checked against the sheet before the run rather than after. Records written this way answer a retailer's question in a minute.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including production records, supplier terms and unreleased product material. We are editors rather than cidermakers or regulatory advisers, and we offer no view on production, blending or labelling compliance. What we can do is make the paper trail hold from fruit to bottle.