Vintage cider: how do we like them apples?

DBS contemplates the three vintages

Along with the fashion for cider (or “cyder” as the really poncey brands have it) comes “vintage” cider. In some cases this doesn’t actually seem to mean the cider has a vintage as such, merely that it is “vintage” in style, but here in the UK mainstream brands such as Weston’s and Thatcher’s do produce aged ciders of a specific year.

I recently had a chance to do a vertical tasting, albeit under rather unscientific circumstances. My sister lives in rural Kent and has a few apple trees in her large garden, so every year she gathers friends and family for a rather messy cider-making party. Small children are sent up into trees to gather the apples, which are loosely chopped by cackling crones, then “scratted” into a pulp. Scratting involves a machine so that job is done by blokes.* The pulp goes into a pleasingly old-fashioned wooden press and the resulting juice is fermented in plastic bins or glass demijohns with bubbling water valves to let the CO2 out but ideally let nothing in to contaminate the cider. In all, each year’s harvest makes about 70 bottles. Mrs H. and I traditionally compose labels for each vintage in time for Christmas which is roughly when the cider is ready for bottling. As a joke we named it Chapple Downer (there is an commercial vineyard in Kent called Chapel Down; my sister’s married name is Downer and the cider is made from apples) and the name has stuck.

It’s a nicely circular process, because by the time of each event the previous year’s cider is drinking nicely and the cider-making party consume quite a lot of it in the process. (For this reason the 2015 vintage was named Perpetuum Mobile—perpetual motion.)

Anyway, my sister gave me a set of 2013, 2014 and 2015 samples at the end of last year, so earlier this year I invited DBS along for this rare chance to try them all together.

2013 Bumper Scrump (so named because it was a bumper crop that year)**
Nose: Instead of fresh apple, it is more like baked apple. Extraordinarily it seems to include aromatic cinnamon and clove notes and raisins too. I keep wondering if this is just suggested to me by flavourings you might add to baked apple, but it does genuinely seem to be there.
Palate: The same thrust as the nose. It’s dry, but not mouth-puckeringly dry. The acidity is well balanced, with a hint of bitterness on the finish. Although bottled as a sparkling cider (with a supposedly calculated dosage of extra sugar for a controlled secondary fermentation) this bottle is not really fizzy any more, but it is nevertheless zesty and refreshing. But overall its character is deep, dark, complex cooked apple.

2014 People's Farming Collective of Littlebourne Fermented Apple Product (I think the name was a reference to the sheer number of people involved in the production)
Nose: Although this sample seems slightly darker in colour than the older cider, the nose is less profound, with more fresh apple and less of the spicy baked apple.
Palate: Properly sparkling with a delicate mousse. Slightly sweeter and more appley than the 2013. But there is a dark fruity weight on the tongue which makes you think that in time it would mature into the spiciness of the 2013.

2015 Perpetuum Mobile
Nose: Essentially similar to the 2014
Palate: Balance now is too much towards the acid, making it not quite comfortable to drink. Interestingly, this bottle was stoppered and left for a day or two, after which its pale colour had darkened (presumably through oxidation) and the palate had mellowed a bit.***

Of course all of this ignores the fact that, especially with production on a haphazard, domestic scale like this, not only will each year’s harvest differ, but the fruit going into each squeeze of the press and each of the various fermenting containers may not be consistent in terms of either quality or balance between different varieties (there are different species of apple tree involved, including a quantity of crab apples, which are apparently important, although nothing is measured very precisely). Different demijohns will ferment differently depending on the sugar present, the viability of the yeast and any accidental infections.

However, there does seem to be a pattern apparent where the youngest cider is acidic, dry and most redolent of fresh apple, then as it ages the attack softens and deeper spicy notes appear. The 2013 is very interesting, and not like any commercial cider I have tasted; DBS said it was by far his favourite, but I think some people might find it a little too over-mellow, and it would be harder to partner with food. The 2014 probably has the best balance between these complexities and the basic package of fruit, tannin and acid, while the 2015 gives the impression of not quite being there yet.

* The first year the scratter was a crude blade attached to an electric drill, which was spun round inside a plastic bucket of apples. Last year we tried using a cheap garden chipper. This was pretty effective at first, but after a while the engine started cutting out. The blokeyest of the blokes starting taking it apart, gradually bypassing switches and safety cut-offs in the hope of getting it going again: eventually is was pretty much just a motor wired into the mains, and it still didn’t work so we had to concede defeat at this point and scratted the rest of the apples in a food processor. Which was pretty effective too. 

** “Scrumping” means stealing apples from someone’s orchard

*** I’ve just tried it again now, some weeks after it was opened, though it has been kept stoppered. It is now frankly brown in colour, but has taken on a Fino sherry note, that high aromatic edge that reminds me of Bostik glue (but in a good way). It’s aggressive, and you feel you wouldn’t want to leave it in contact with your tooth enamel for longer than necessary, but actually quite interesting. I wonder if some sort of flor has developed…

The complete set of Chapple Downer labels:

Osbourns is the name of my sister's house

2012 saw a relatively meagre harvest, which we spun as being "select"

By contrast, 2013 was a bumper harvest

This is where the Richard Scarry homage reaches its peak to date

The worm here is a reference to the Midgard Serpent in Norse myth

Kopparberg Blackberry & Lime and Kopparberg Winter Fruits

On a recent brunch visit to J.D. Wetherspoons I was pleased to see two new varieties of Kopparberg Cider in this watering hole. For a long time Wetherspoons have had exclusive deals with the Swedish Cider company to be supplied with varieties and flavours of the cider that can only be sold in their pubs and bars. I know that at least the blackberry variety is and the pub periodical informs me that a Blueberry and Lime flavour is on the way.

Kopparberg with 

Blackberry & Lime

Chilled
Nose: Blackberry with the faintest hint of lime
Taste: Some sweetness, sweet berry, quite creamy, medium-high fizz. OK, but not amazing.

With ice
Taste: Quite fresh and crisp; I still don't taste any lime but thirst-quenching and nice enough.

In conclusion

The plain blackberry Kopparberg was one of my favourite, this isn't a patch on that—the inclusion of lime seems rather pointless.

Kopparberg with Winter Fruit

Chilled
Nose: rich jammy berries with raspberry and blackcurrant
Taste: some apple followed by Ribena cordial. Lots of berry and less fizzy than the Blackberry and lime, only a medium fizz. Quite similar to the kiddies cocktail of Ribena and Lemonade.

With ice
With ice and a bit of dilution the drink seems completely non-alcoholic and really just tastes like blackcurrant and lemonade. Very clean and exceptionally easy to drink. Rather tasty.

In conclusion

It is worth noting that this variety (like the Blackberry & Lime) is bottled at 4.5%ABV rather than the usual domestic 4.0%ABV.

This fact makes the smoothness and drinkability of this cider even more surprising. You could quaff a couple of bottles of this very easily and the effects could really creep up on you.

Kopparberg Cloudberry - Sparkling Cider

On a recent trip to Tesco, while on my usual stroll down the cider aisle on the lookout for something new to try, I came across Kopparberg Cloudberry, which is an apple cider with a hint of cloudberry.

Given the cosmopolitan and learned nature of our readers, I am sure that many will know what cloudberries are, but, typically, we don’t see these very often in the UK.

The cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus) is popular in Scandinavian and Baltic countries, as well as Russia, and is commonly used to make jam in addition to flavouring spirits. They are also popular in Canada, where they tend to be used to flavour beer.

Kopparberg Cloudberry (4.0%ABV)

Nose: Jammy apple, with berries and a hint of spice.
Taste: Medium-high fizz with dry apple upfront, followed by fruity berry notes; these remind me a little of blackberry and a little of raspberry. As the cloudberry is quite a dry berry, this is less sweet than many of the other flavoured Kopparbergs.

With ice:
Not bad; this actually works quite well. Although the sweetness comes through a bit more, the drink has a touch more refreshment. On balance, I like this equally well with ice or just chilled.

In Conclusion

I like some Kopparberg varieties better than others and I think that this is definitely one of the better ones. If you don’t like the mixed berry or mixed fruit varieties I’d suggest trying this one for a pleasant surprise.

Kopparberg Cloudberry is available for around £2.50 for 500ml from Tesco.

You Old Rascal!

I’ve spent quite a lot of time looking at wildly flavoured ciders, or beer producers entering the cider foray with silly names and pretentious marketing campaigns. Today, however, the cider that I’ll be featuring has its feet more firmly on the ground. It comes from that old English favourite, Thatchers of Somerset. Personally, I always think a little more of a public house if their fizzy draught cider is Thatchers Gold rather than Strongbow or Blackthorn, but then that’s just my preference.

Legend has it that every night, under the cover of darkness, a wily old fox crept out of his den at the bottom of our orchard, and tiptoed his way to the cider store to help himself to fresh supplies. No matter how hard we tried, we just couldn’t keep the fox away from his favourite tipple. You’d regularly hear the cry, “The old rascal’s been at it again!”—and so the name ‘Old Rascal’ was born.

Described as medium-dry, Thatchers Old Rascal is bottled at 4.5% ABV.

Colour: Honey-amber.
Nose: Quite a strong nose that simply bursts out of the bottle: dry apples and a slight leafiness.
Taste: A medium-level of fizz with quite small bubbles. Initially, it’s dry and then the sweetness pops up, followed by long dry, slightly bitter finish.
With ice: The balance seems a bit off when served with ice and, rather than adding anything, I think that it disrupts the underlying flavour of the cider—definitely best to just have it well-chilled.

A tasting of a trio of Magners Specials

As is apparent from the plethora of new products I have been reviewing recently, the popularity of cider continues to climb, But, once you’ve made an apple cider and expanded your range to include pear and berry varieties, where can you go from there?

Well, Magners seem to have found a solution with their range of “luxury” ciders, each of which combines an extra flavour with something more traditional. In doing this, the boffins at Magners have come up with some imaginative flavours, namely:

1) Pear & Ginger

2) Spiced Apple & Honey
3) Spiced Apple & Rhubarb

Each of these is served in 500ml (slightly smaller than the usual 568ml) bottles with an ABV of 4%. They are available in both pubs and supermarkets. So how did they taste?

1) Pear & Ginger
A very light yellow/green in colour, with a nose of gentle ginger and sweet pear. In terms of taste, I thought it was quite dry and slightly fruity, with ginger on the finish, but the ginger note isn’t particularly fiery. It is rather cooling, but it really needs twice as much flavour as it has.

2) Spiced Apple & Honey
Dark yellow in colour, with only a minimal hint of apple on the nose. Taste-wise, the drink is festive and rather wintery, with the cinnamon and nutmeg spiced apple and a touch of honey being easily distinguishable. Pretty good, this is even better over ice.

3) Spiced Apple & Rhubarb
Rose pink in colour, with nose of light rhubarb. To taste, there are notes of dry rhubarb with a touch of sweetness and the flavour of fresh, crisp apple. Quite refreshing. I thought this was the best of the range. There are hints of cloves and cinnamon on the finish.

Wychwood Snake's Bite

The flavoured cider, perry and alcoholic ginger beer trend has been roaring away for over five years now and seems to show no signs of abetting. One producer with their ear to the ground is Wychwood, who excel at a mix of innovation and surfing the tide of change.

Wychwood Brewery (of Witney, Oxfordshire) have already ventured into this market with Ginger Beard (an alcoholic ginger beer), which was released at the back-end of 2012.

Now, whenever I hear the term “snakebite”, I think of the “Student’s Snakebite” (AKA “Snakey B”), which is a mix of Carling, Strongbow and blackcurrant cordial. Snake's Bite from Wychwood is described as a “blend of traditionally crafted beer infused with cider apples”; essentially, Snakebite in bottle.*

The Taste
Nose: Strong, malty ale, plus creamy apple tart.
Taste: More malt to taste, followed by a burst of sweetness and then a bitter hops flavour. Finally, there’s some cream on the finish.

Over ice:
This improves the drink somewhat, but, for me, it is too sweet and the ice brings out an odd and unpleasant metallic quality in the drink.

In Conclusion
I think that the quality of this product is obviously far better then the mix served in your average Students’ Union, but you probably wouldn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that it wasn’t really for me. It does leave me wondering what portion of Wychwood’s existing fans would drink this; it seems like it would to be too sickly for the ale drinkers and too hoppy for the fans of their cider or ginger beer.

* The blackcurrant cordial in the Snakebite recipe is technically optional.

Stella Artois Cidre (Apple Cider)

With so many bottles, tasting notes and notebooks in the Institute’s South Coast branch, it is not surprising that sometimes things go missing; such was the case with this article. The tasting notes and photographs were taken approximately one year ago, but, as these records were never formalised, you lovely folk never got to the results.

The subject in question was the launch of Stella Artois Cidre (Spring 2011), which was slightly marred, because there was a product recall (some of the bottles had a tendency to explode in people’s fridges; an issue which has now thankfully been resolved). I won’t go into the finer details of their advertising campaign, as they are well set-out in this article on the new Pear variety.

Stella Artois Cidre is made using hand-picked apples and is made to a Belgian recipe. It is bottled at 4.5% ABV.

The Taste

Colour: Bright orange colour, somewhat akin to the artificial glow of Magners or Bulmers.
Taste: Rather effervescent, with an initial dryness which was followed by the sweetness of freshy-pressed apple juice. Served out of the fridge, this is very refreshing and one of the better bottled sparkling ciders available.

With Ice: I don’t think Stella Artois Cidre (apple) improves with ice, as it loses a lot of its flavour, is less fizzy and, ultimately, provides less refreshment.

In Conclusion

A rather good product once you get past the cidre/cider marketing pap; good value for money and worth a punt.

Kopparberg Raspberry Cider

Kopparberg Swedish Cider like to innovate and bring a couple of new flavours to the market each year, keeping things fresh. I, for one, always look forward to trying the new varieties. Top of my list of all-time favourites are: Blackberry, Blackcurrant Witches Brew (Halloween 2006) and, more recently, Naked Apple.

Today, I am looking at a raspberry-flavoured Kopparberg, which is made by combining their basic apple cider with raspberry juice and a touch of mint. Without further ado, let’s look at what it was like.

The Taste

Colour: Rose pink.

Nose: Sweet, jammy raspberry, a touch of sweet apple and a herbal note towards the end.

Taste: A medium-level of fizz accompanied a good raspberry flavour.  It was creamy, and was neither too sweet, nor too dry. Like on the nose, there was a slight herbal note at the end, courtesy of the mint.

Taste over ice: Much improved. This seemed to be fresher and less intense, which made it more refreshing and easier to drink. The raspberry flavour remained strong throughout.

In Conclusion
Having tried so many varieties of Kopparberg, I know that some are bound to be better than others. This Raspberry version is average, but with a positive outlook; as such, I would have it again, if I had a particular hankering for it (which I can imagine happening).

Stella Artois Pear Cidre (Cider)

Last year, I reviewed the new cider from Stella Artois, which, for reasons of pretension and/or marketing guff, they insist that everyone call “cidre not cider”, even going so far as to provide phonetic notes*. That said, the cider itself was pretty well-received, both from me and the cider-drinking folks I speak to.

So popular, in fact, that a second product has been added to the range: a pear cider (oops, sorry, I mean cidre!); this follows in the footsteps of Magners, Bulmers and Kopparberg.**

Stella Pear Cidre is made with hand-picked pears using a Belgian recipe and is bottled at 4.5% ABV. Beyond that, I couldn’t find out much.

But how does it taste?

Colour: Light green (rather like Rose’s Lime Cordial).

Nose: Slightly acidic; there’s some fruit, but it’s not that inviting.

Taste: Far, far better than the nose (but then who goes around sniffing cider?), with a medium-high level of fizz. It is not too sweet and has plenty of juicy, fruity notes and a good amount of dryness. Overall, I thought it was rather good and pretty refreshing, but maybe a touch too gassy.

Over ice: I don’t think that ice adds much to the flavour of the drink, but it will keep it cooler for longer and will quickly cool down a bottle that’s at room temperature. Personally, I would rather drink Stella Pear Cidre without ice, but well-chilled.

In Conclusion

I think that, all thing considered, this is a pretty good product and is far better than the offerings from Bulmers or Magners (which I’m not very keen on). I’d buy Stella Pear Cider again.

Stella Artois Pear Cidre (Cider) is available to purchase from supermarkets for around £1.80 for 568ml (one imperial pint).

* I think that this is a pretty vain and nonsensical gimmick; if someone has trouble pronouncing the name of your product, they are going to be less likely to order it from a bar. That said, in supermarkets (where no such oraton is required), this cider has done very well; according to The Grocer magazine, it has done £36m of supermarket sales, which is the equivalent of 16.8% (by volume) of the current cider market.

** Strongbow have also followed suit with a pear cider.

Bulmers No.17

Word of mouth is a great tool in this Business we call Booze and I love getting leads off friends, family and readers. The most recent one was a "new type of Bulmers" or a "Pink Bulmers"and when I heard that their new marketing campaign was "Experimenters Wanted" the IAE seemed like a perfect place to feature it.

Bulmers No.17* is a summer variety of their drink and follows hot on the heels of Bulmers Crisp Apple and Bulmers Red Apple. With this new flavour they have been a little more adventurous with a combination of cider, red berries and lime.


Look: Light Pinky Red
Taste: rather refreshing, strawberries, apple and then some tartness, courtesy of the lime. Reminds me a little of Strawberry and Apple Crumble. Although sweeter than most ciders and not really dry it was nevertheless quite refreshing.
I must state that although I am not usually a fan of cider on ice I thought that No.17 improves when served this way. Essentially it becomes more refreshing and easier to drink.

Given its pudding-like qualities I decided to "experiment" with it in a cocktail.

Summer Crumble Fizz

Toa champagne flute I added 20ml of the Fabulous Vodka Company's Caralicious I then topped this up with Bulmers No:17

Depsite the caramel vodka having it's own sweetness when mixed with the Bulmers it does not overwhelm the drink, instead the Caralicious adds a buttery, caramel twist to the drink. It furthers the whole apple crumble effect somewhat. The odd thing is that although it reminds you of something warm and comforting it is actually cool and refreshing, a veritable feast for the mind and senses.

In conclusion, I really like Bulmers No.17 and it's probably the best Bulmers I have tried.

Bulmers No.17 is available from (among other places) Tescos for around £2 for 568ml.

* It seems that Bulmers number each of their products although I'm not sure that all numbers make it to market:
No.9 Original Apple
No.10 Pear
Although I'm not sure of the assigned number, Bulmers have released an Apple and Pear Blend and a Red Apple Variety which sits somewhere in between 11 and 14.
No.15 Crisp Blend
No.17 Red Berries & Lime