Corporeal Crafting: Tastes, Knowledges and Quality Protocols in British Cider-Making

This chapter interrogates how Welsh craft cider-makers utilise corporeal taste to construct their own normative framework of quality, in relation to both agri-capitalism and appellations of origin. My primary intention is to highlight the critical role the body and the senses play in the construction of knowledge about what constitutes a ‘quality’ cider and indicate the tensions that emerge when such embodied and intuitive knowledge is abstracted and codified. In so doing, I work to show where bodies – both human and nonhuman – are located in craft production processes, as well as the ways these are absented in makers’ narratives of other forms of production. First, I discuss the emphasis craft producers place on manual labour, natural processes, and minimal intervention and indicate the ways this draws on the vitality and unpredictability of nonhuman bodies. Secondly, I unpack how craft producers value the flavour inconsistencies that emerge from the interplays between human and nonhuman bodies, and tease out the disjuncture between their own markers of quality and the values that underpin appellation frameworks, such as Protected Geographical Indications (PGIs). Finally, I offer an exploration of how makers learn their craft through embodied practice and reflect on the centrality of the senses in craft cider making, as well as the interplays between bodies, taste, and the reproduction of knowledge.