We havefinished the apple harvest season after over three weeks of intense activity. The Custom Drinks plant has received almost 900,000kg of cider apples at its facilities in Chantada (Lugo), an amount that has surpassed all expectations in a year of poor yields for apples, hence the campaign being described as excellent by the company, both for the quantity and the quality of the apples.
After years of firm commitment to ecological cultivation, 70% of the cider apples received at the plant during this campaign have been certified by the Consejo Regulador de Agricultura Ecológica de Galicia (Galician Regulatory Council for Ecological Agriculture), as opposed to 50% last year. This considerable increase is due to the company’s commitment to boosting ecological farming and the use of ecological apples to make its ciders, an initiative to which the farmers of the area have responded to positively by adapting their crops to this system.
The cider apple delivered to the Customdrinks plant comes from cooperatives and smaller autochthonous apple farmers and even individuals from the area, which make up a high proportion of the apples obtained at about 22% of the total amount.
The varieties collected are Raxo, Príncipe, Peró, Verdeñá and Rabiosa with which the company will make its wide range of Maeloc ciders. With the 900,000kg of apples obtained almost 800,000 litres of Maeloc Galician cider can be obtained.
The harvest is carried out in a number of areas within Galicia, but overall in Chantada, where this crop has a deep-rooted tradition. This year, the harvest campaign has been carried out earlier due to the weather conditions last summer.
