Tiddly Pommes – Oxford Apple Juice

About us

What we do

Within Oxford and the surrounding area enormous quantities of lovely apples go unused each autumn.

Tiddly Pommes is Rupert’s experimental local micro-enterprise which turns them into bottled apple juice which is sold locally.

Trees whose crops might fall unharvested exist at a great variety of local sites and for many reasons, not least as relics of former plantations by which the old city was at one time practically surrounded.

Tiddly Pommes seeks to demonstrate that it is possible to make good use of such precious resources, even if this is unfashionable in the current era of mass institutionalised waste.

Far from being a problem, the surviving trees can offer us something special and intriguing as well as tasty, a characterful selection from the nation’s great abandoned apple heritage and a unique glimpse of Oxford’s past.

How we started

Tiddly Pommes was begun informally in 2007 in connection with the then-new East Oxford Farmers’ Market, whose emphasis remains on local, ethical production and strong community-based organisation. The idea of offering a local fruit-juicing process grew out of a background of winemaking and engineering experience, and production was achieved through the operation of a large single-screw basket press. From an original scale of a few dozen bottles per season, the operation has now expanded and also includes a line in beekeeping.

Today

In August 2016 we set up a dedicated processing facility in Cutteslowe, North Oxford. The manual press has been superseded by a fabulous all-stainless belt-press, and bespoke equipment for the rest of the juice-handling process has been developed accordingly. The guiding principles remain as originally intended: the fruit still comes from local trees which are not under heavy chemical treatment regimes. The juice, which is therefore effectively organic, is not filtered and it contains no added ingredients. It is carefully pasteurised and will keep for a long time unopened.

Do you have apples going to waste?

I have an apple tree in my garden and its fruit goes to waste. Could you process its fruit for me?

Very likely, yes! Please contact us and we will press your fruit and return you some of the juice!

Does it matter what variety of apples we have?

Not at all! In the course of a season we might process sixty or seventy different varieties of apple—sometimes in just a small quantity—right across the spectrum from sharp to sweet.