It is apple picking time in the orchard of Sussex again and the huge fermenting vats at Horam based cider maker Merrydown are filling up with this year's vintage.

Merrydown was started more than 50 years ago by friends Jack Ward and Ian Howie as an attempt to bring cider-making back home.

The drink, whose name comes from the Latin cidre meaning strong drink, came over with William the Conqueror in 1066.

It was first made in the UK at a farm near Battle Abbey.

Merrydown is only a few miles from the original site but its product is a long way from the cloudy brew produced almost a millennium ago in Battle.

Managing director Chris Carr said the firm had a very precarious start in 1946.

"In the first year, 1,000 cases of apple wine were produced.

By day they fermented the wine and filled empty champagne bottles they had collected from some of Eastbourne's posh hotels and by night they sold the wine to local pubs."

By 1947 the scale of production had outgrown Jack Ward's garage at his home in Rotherfield and the partners bought Horam Manor with seven acres of land.

The popularity of the wine grew through word of mouth, from Sussex to London and then on to the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge.

The partners ploughed all the profits back into improving the plant and machinery to satisfy the increasing demand.

Growth continued until in 1956 when the Government introduced excise duty on British wines above 8.5 per cent proof.

The firm responded by increasing the strength to give customers a better product.

The blow was repeated in 1974 when the tax was doubled.

This time Merrydown reformulated its wine to get round the high tax.

The new, slightly sparkling brew was an immediate hit.

sales took of in the same way as the original recipe in 1946.

Vintage Dry was launched two years later.

Mr Carr said: "The apples we use are all locally grown eating and cooking apples. We don't use the traditional cider apples, which are bitter.

"Other firms try to copy our product but they never come up to the mark."

As well as vintage cider the firm makes a brand called Pulse and the country's number one non-alcoholic apple drink Shloer.

The bottling plant at Merrydown can produce up to 17,000 litre bottles per hour.

In a year four million litres of cider and Shloer are made.

The company, which employs 43 staff, has a small export market with Japan having a particular liking for the Vintage Cider.