Turning heritage fruit into eau-de-vie

HRH The Prince of Wales’s private orchard offers sanctuary to many heirloom fruit trees – which can now be enjoyed as a heritage brandy

- KEVIN PILLEY

Few men have royal approval to raid a prince’s orchard but Barney Wilczak does. Four or five times every autumn, the former conservation photographer can pick as many apples as he wants from the private orchard and apple bank at the edge of HRH The Prince of Wales’ Highgrove estate, in Gloucestershire. The collection comprises some of the UK’s oldest and rarest apple varieties, including a sapling from the apple tree in Sir Isaac Newton’s garden at Woolsthorpe Manor, in Lincolnshire. Wilczak, a recycling proponent, takes his spoils back to the timber and Cotswold-stone lean-to greenhouse of the family home in Stratten, near Tetbury, where, with the help of his partner, Hannah, and two Czech stills, he presses and ferments them to make heritage fruit brandy: the authentically British Capreolus Distillery Eau de Vie. “I was put in touch with David Wilson, who farms Duchy Home Farm; he is a specialist in the preservation of heirloom crops,” explains Wilczak. “It was only then that I discovered what they were growing and what a wonderful resource it was. They were keen to work locally and my background parallels so much of what they are trying to achieve in terms of sustainability.”

The Duchy of Cornwall bought the 1,000-acre Highgrove estate in 1980 from Maurice Macmillan. The farm became organic in 1985 and the orchard was added in 2015. “The main reason the orchard was planted was as a gene bank for genetic conservation, which is a theme Prince Charles regards as one of the central strands of sustainability,” explains Wilson. “We depend on fewer genes than ever for our food, due to the control of breeding programmes by global companies. This theme extends to rare-breed livestock and old varieties of cereal, as well as vegetables.”