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Please ring for cider
Please ring for cider. If only it were always that easy. Photograph: Bill Bradshaw
Please ring for cider. If only it were always that easy. Photograph: Bill Bradshaw

Traditional cider polishes its apples

This article is more than 12 years old
It's not only sales of mass-produced cider which are booming, the traditional tipple is also enjoying a renaissance

A short guide to British cider
Cider around the world

Three centuries ago it was "English champagne". A couple of decades ago it was better known as the stuff drunk on park benches. Today, cider's star is on the rise - sales are booming (pub cider sales last year were up 1.6%, beer and wine down around 4%, and in supermarkets sales were up £84m to £822m). And while most supermarkets and pubs doggedly push major brands to the fore, the real boom is among smaller producers using traditional methods and a higher apple juice content.

It's best known as a great, refreshing summer drink, but in winter mulled cider triumphs, with many decent pubs now offering it from November through to January's wassailing season. It's especially good with a shot of Somerset cider brandy - just one of many diverse products coming out of British cider orchards these days.

Given how well cider works with food, it's no surprise that well-known chefs have been quick to capitalise on some of the great artisanal products around. Jamie Oliver visited Roger Wilkins' barn in Somerset in his last series, and cooked pork belly with Wilkin's bone dry scrumpy. Rick Stein and the Hairy Bikers have recently championed the ciders and perries from Gregg's Pit, and Mark Hix is currently enthusing about the versatility our orchards offer.

"If you're going to cook with British ingredients," he says, "cider ... can offer a substitute for French brandy, sherry, port, even champagne." He demonstrates this with a perry cocktail with pomona (a mix of apple juice and cider brandy) to accompany sardines marinated in cider vinegar and veal cutlets flamed in cider brandy.

Cider tends to come in pint glasses in pubs, so we think of it as a substitute for beer. But it's acidic and fruit-based, with a flavour range from dry to sweet like wine. There are at least as many different apple as grape varieties, and as with wine, cider can be blended or made with single varieties. Even the so-called méthode champenoise was perfected by English perry makers almost a century before it was appropriated by the French. So next time you see a traditional cider at a hefty 7% ABV, don't think of it as super-strength beer, but rather more akin to a low strength wine.

Over here, I've written a brief summary of some of the world's other producing regions, from Germany's dry apfelwein to the wonderfully bubbly sidra of Spain. These various cider making cultures are only just starting to talk to each other, and many drinkers in the UK don't yet know they exist. Many of these foreign ciders aren't yet available in Britain (notwithstanding attempts by the likes of Stella to capitalise with its cidre effort) but they will be soon. Even without them the UK has a cider culture (there's another brief guide here) that has much to offer anyone interested in flavour, provenance, tradition, heritage - or just having a great time over a glass or two of something good.

More on this story

More on this story

  • A short guide to British cider

  • Cider around the world

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