From Huddersfield to Sweden to Australia

I had the pleasure of having a coffee, not a cider with Christian from Rekorderlig cider a couple of weeks ago. I told you I was behind on my cider drinking!!! It has been vino and mostly rosso with this winter weather. I spotted to Rekorderlig cider in Camperdown Cellars Darlinghurst and asked Romy the manager where he had got them from. Romy told me that the brand was new in the country and that Camperdown was the first to stock them. Camperdown Cellars Darlinghurst really is a top wine store check it outhttp://www.camperdowncellars.com.au/

There are three in the range being apple, pear and believe it or not Strawberry and Lime. I called up Christian the brand manager and we caught up.

Christian told me the story of how his brother, himself and a friend started a company in the UK to import Peruvian beer. Lets face it the drink industry is often run by fads and what is in fashion at that moment. Smart move boys as South American beers are always popular, you just need a story. After they made a success of the beer the boys started to import a Swedish cider, what cider..............not from Somerset? Christian was at pains to make sure that a Somerset boy like me understood that his range of ciders are aimed at the commercial market.

So far I have taken the top off the pear cider , Swedish pear cider, it still seems weird, and I had it out of a champagne flute. It is pale in colour and with plenty of bubbles. On the nose it is hints of sweetness and crisp green pear. I the mouth it is on the sweeter side of ciders, but importantly it is not overly sweet.

This cider is set to be a hit in all the infashion bars within the next couple of months. It will really start to take off when the weather heats up. It has great packaging and will look good on any wine bar table.

http://www.rekorderlig.com.au/

The sweet taste of defeat!

I was up at 3.30 this morning; I am part of my sons school's football supporters club committee. We put on a bbq and the game (Australia Vs Germany, for those of you that live under a rock) at the school. Oh dear, the cheap sausages were the best thing of the night! Pim, Pim what were you thinking, bad tactics...............anyway........I digress.

Lets talk about the night before and my date with a truely commercial style cider. I really did not hold high hopes, I thought Australia might have a better chance of impressing. 5 Seeds cider is made by Tooheys under the Extra Dry label. If you have ever tried Tooheys Extra Dry you will know it is far from being dry. It is tailored at the unsophisticated beer drinker who wants a step up from VB or Tooheys New. A brand driven by smart advertising and positioning. It is not a cheap beer, but also not a boutique. It's middle market price point sets it apart from most other beers. Anyway that is enough dumping on a beer. We are here to talk zyyyyder!

5 Seeds Cider has great packaging, they have managed to save money by using the same bottle used for Tooheys Extra Dry, the bottle is embossed with the name. The back label states "Serving suggestion: Bloody cold" and that "The clean crisp flavour has reinvented cider" LOL. Ok, you do need a little hyperbole, however "..reinvented cider"

I thought I would give this cider 2 apples out of 10, but I had not tried it. Surprisingly I awarded this cider, more than two apples. It is pale in colour, and heavily carbonated. It is totally uncomplicated and a good commercial drink. OK, we are not talking top shelf here, however, it really serves it purpose. It is sweet and lacks length of flavour, but it is refreshing and lacks the horrible chemical flavours of cheap beer. I expect this cider will do very well over the next few years. Join their Facebook group at http://tinyurl.com/26bx3a4 living proof that you need to constantly feed your groups.

6.5 apples out of 10.

Oh, no am I behind on my cider drinking

Well, here is the latest release from everybodys favourite cider band, The Wurzels.

It is about somebody called Ruby!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PLE3IjTRb8

cheers

Ben

LARS - and the history of cider and Frankenstein food.

When we drove the back way from our village, Backwell in Somerset, to Bristol, we would drive through a village called Barrow Gurney. At the end of the village was the turning for LARS, Long Ashton Research Station. This world famous research station was set up by the government in 1903 to improve the quality of cider, originally being called The National Fruit and Cider Institute . Local cider producers were struggling to produce consistantly good cider, the institute was set up to help.

They not only researched apples but also a lot of other fruits. During World War 2 they were asked to research an alternative to oranges. There was a shortage of oranges in Britain and a replacement vitamin c source was required. Ribena was born.

LARS made some big breakthroughs for cider, especially working out which apple varieties worked best and introducing shorter trees, easier to harvest!

LARS was closed in 2003, one hundred years after it opened. The nature of LARS changed after the second world war and in the 1960's and 1970's it was reponsible for pioneering GM foods, oops not a popular move. It originally came from the trials that were run on apple trees. They were bombared with radiation in order to stop disease. When the research moved to wheat, the same techiques were used. The whole issue of GM came to a head in the late 1990's, Prince Charles called these foods "Frankenstein Foods"

As I young kid I was not so interested in the cider station, as my Dad called it. I was interested in the ghost story that was told about the junction where you turned off for Bristol. In the late 1950's a young woman was hit by a car early one evening. At the time the road was a lot higher, a resevoir was built and the road was lowered. A ghost of the young woman is said to appear about 6 feet above the road (the height of the original road).

There you have it LARS , GM and ghosts.

Now that is better!

It was chilly here in Bondi last night. Well it is all relative I suppose! After a long day at the computer I needed some cider!! But what to go with it. I looked in the fridge and Pitango spring lamb soup with red wine, roasted garlic and rosemary was there waiting for me. It said "serves two" on the packet, two what, children? The soup was delicious, thank you Mr Pitango and my wonderful partner for doing the shopping. Thanks, Jules!

So to the cider, I had been a little disappointed with the Westons Pear Cider. It just didn't quite do it for me. So to the real cider, apple cider. As you can see from the photo, it is a lovely almost burnt golden colour. At 6.5% alcohol it looks to be a serious cider. It certainly smells of fermented apples. In the mouth it is very good. It combines touches of sweetness with a lovely bitter sweet character. There are four catagories of cider apple sweet, sharp, bittersweet and bittersharp. I will go into that in more detail soon.

This cider is very good. Sweet and bitter with a lovely lingering finish. I really enjoyed this medium bodied beauty. The soup was great also.

8.5 apples out of 10.

Westons Premium Organic Pear Cider.

On the quest to find the most ciderlious of all ciders the, well, the quest continued tonight. Tonight I took the cider and sushi mission a little further. We went to Ten Japanese which is our local restaurant. I love that place, the best sushi and sashimi in town.

I took a bottle of Westons Premium Organic Pear Cider. Westons started producing ciders in 1880 in the Herefordshire village of Much Marcle, what a great name. Hereforshire is on the board of England and Wales, on the English side. Westons have some pretty amazing figures "Westons Cider employs more than 130 people, produces over 30 different ciders and perries, sells approximately 28 million pints a year and has a turnover of over £24 million." That is a serious business!

So to the pear cider. Firstly the words "Premium" and "Reserve" are words that are very over used in the liquor industry. This "Premium" Pear cider is not premium. I am sure Westons must keep their best ciders back in the UK. I did not manage to get a photo of a glass of the cider, I did not take my camera to Ten Japanese. The colour is a deep dark golden, surprisingly dark for a pear cider. This lead me to think that the cider was going to have a touch of sweetness. I was right. This 6% alcohol cider has a fairly big wack of residual sugar. There are also touches of savoury characters and a little bitterness right in the background. Overall I was fairly disappointed with this organic pear cider.

7 pears out of 10.