APPLE Day is coming up soon – this year it’s being observed on October 21 – and will, I hope, be celebrated with even more enthusiasm, now that villages across Somerset are really getting into it.

Of course we have a lot to celebrate with our own apple industry: we are one of the relatively few counties where consumers can still drive out into the countryside and buy direct from the grower.

But those of us who can cast our minds back to the 70s often reflect how lucky we are to have home-grown apples at all.

In an unwelcome and early manifestation of what membership of the then Common Market meant French growers simply dumped thousands of tons of Golden Delicious fruit onto the British market. They were woolly, flavourless and generally unappealing. But they were cheap, they came backed by an expensive advertising campaign - and British shoppers fell for it.

And a couple of seasons of the French using apples to try to avenge Agincourt brought British growers to their knees and sent many out of business. Appeals to Europe brought the response of grants for grubbing-up orchards: not the solution we wanted – which was for the French to cut back production. But because they allowed them to exit the industry with dignity and a reasonable credit rating they were eagerly grasped by British producers and that year thousands of acres of fine orchards fell before the onslaught of the chainsaw.

So we should be grateful and celebrate- and while we’re at it raise a cheer and a glass to the cider industry.

I’m chairman of the all-party Parliamentary Cider Committee and I am very proud to hold the post. This month I shall be hosting one of our biannual receptions for members of both Houses when I’m hoping to be able to report – despite some slowing down of sales – that the industry is still very positive about the future and that more members of the up-and-coming generation of craft producers have joined the ranks of the National Association of Cider Makers.

As an example of how cider fever is now gripping the countryside at the last reception we had the first appearance by a fledgling producer from Northamptonshire who was making a range of outstanding ciders merely by collecting and pressing all the apples people in his village didn’t want and were allowing to fall to the ground and rot.

However what hangs around the NACM’s neck like an albatross – and here we come back to the matter of alcoholism – are the two-litre bargain bottles of so-called cider which can be had for a couple of quid off the bottom shelf in the supermarket.

I use the term ‘so-called’ because they are not true ciders: merely blends of carbonated water, industrial spirit and apple concentrate, much of it shipped from China. They are a problem, and in the eyes of large sections of the public they are merely symptomatic of cider’s role as the cause of so much social evil.

Since these brands are favoured by hard drinkers you might have thought the supermarkets would have acted responsibly and banned their sale. But the last intervention by the retailers involved an arbitrary ban on selling in some areas any cider over 4.5 per cent ABV, imposed, I might say, in response to a lot of dubious pressure by local authorities and accompanied by dark hints about objections being raised to licence renewal.

This allowed the stores to continue selling their bottom-shelf hooch but discriminated against many of the craft producers and their premium products, since cider ferments out naturally at between six and seven per cent. Meanwhile the supermarkets continued merrily making a bottle of spirits available for £12 or less.

So yes, cider has an image problem. But it’s one the industry is doing its best to overcome by concentrating on the premium end of the market and encouraging us to drink cider as we do wine, appreciating the subtle differences created by apple varieties, soil types and local microclimates.

I’m proud to support the cider industry. It creates jobs in rural areas where they are otherwise scarce. It delivers huge environmental benefits through orchards which remain pretty well undisturbed for most of the year. And it markets a range of products which makes us world leaders in the field. And it’s not often you can make that claim in this country.