A CIDER revivalist from Dorset has scooped a lifetime achievement award.

Nick Poole, of Powerstock, near Bridport, was awarded the Gold Medal Lifetime Achievement Award for Services to the Cider Industry at the Bath and West Gold Medal at the Royal Bath & West Show.

He received the prestigious award for his work in promoting traditional cider and Dorset cider, in particular through the Powerstock Cider Festival. The festival ran for 16 years and raised more than £43,000 for charity.

Nick, who runs the West Milton Cider Company near Bridport, and his wife Dawn, were also delighted to win Gold in the Bottle Conditioned Cider class for their Lancombe Rising cider. The brew was put forward for the championship and was awarded the honour of the Supreme British Champion Cider, receiving The Worshipful Company of Fruiterers’ Perpetual Cup.

Nick said: “I’m delighted. It’s pretty amazing to be given two such prestigious awards in one year!”

Nick is credited with inspiring a renaissance in Dorset cider-making and won the award for outstanding service to the cider industry. He started making cider professionally in 2000, after a successful career in the building industry.

The success of the festival has inspired a remarkable revival in cider-making in west Dorset.

When Nick started making cider, there were fewer than a dozen makers. Now, the county boasts more than 40 commercial cider enterprises.

Besides organising the festival, Nick is also a cider-maker of distinction in his own right. In 2015, his bottle-conditioned cider was runner-up as Supreme Champion British Cider at the Bath and West, although perhaps his greatest achievement was to beat the French at their own game, when he carried off the top prize at the Concours de Cidre St Helene Bondeville in Normandy, with his Lancômbe Rising champagne-style cider.

Paying tribute to Nick, former Orchards and Cider chairman, Rupert Best, said that he had made “a multi-dimensional contribution to artisan cider-making and its local markets.” He also praised his contribution to orcharding in Dorset, through the DATA project (Dorset Apple Tree Analysis) which he led, which uncovered and catalogued many previously unknown Dorset apple varieties.

The project started with the idea of just producing a small document about cider making in Dorset. Nick found hardly any information on its history and set about discovering and rediscovering old varieties of tree. It resulted in seeing three mother orchards on National Trust land as well as establishing trees in Melplash.

Rupert added: “The outcome, in 2011, was a collection of some 38 varieties that can now be found in a number of mother orchards around the county. Countryman, entrepreneur and all-round good egg, Nick is a worthy winner of the Royal Bath and West Gold Medal.”