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/

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.

Cider, my earliest memories and Punt Road Ciders

Every Sunday lunchtime my Dad would go over to the local village club, Backwell Village Club in what is now North Somerset. When I was a small kid it was plain old Somerset. Anyway, he would always come back with two big bottles of Williams cider. They were big brown bottles that looked like the old Corona Lemonade bottles that the milkman used to deliver. Corona was lemonade that was made in Wales, well before the stuff that calls itself beer came along. As a young teenager we were always allowed a glass of this golden brown fizzy drink with our Sunday dinner, traditionally we always ate at 6pm on a Sunday. The sweeter version was the favourite. This was my introduction to cider, thanks Dad.

We lived on the side of a valley and across the valley we could see Coates Cider Factory, which at it's height was the second largest cider producer in the world. It closed in 1975, oh, am I showing my age.

Here is a great old Pathe News film clip from the 1960's click here introducing the Wurzels who are West Country cider legends. You will be hearing more from The Wurzels.

I will tell you more of my life with cider in future blogs.

And so to my first review on Landlord, cider I up, and it goes to an Australian winery!

Punt Road Winery from the Yarra Valley in Victoria. Check them out Punt Road Wines.

Cider is about to take off in Australia. I spent many, many years as a liquor retailer in Sydney, Australia and all we ever sold was Bulmers Sweet, Dry or Draught. Now there are plenty of domestic and imported ciders to choose from. Many wineries have jumped on the micro brewery craze and others are about to ride the cider wave that is about to happen.

Punt Road make two ciders, both new products on the market in 2010

Punt Road Apple Cider.

At 5.5% alcohol this is a medium strength cider made from apples sourced from the Napoleone family orchards in the Yarra Valley. Three varieties of apples are used to make this well balanced crisp dry cider. It is very pale in colour and has a wonderful sparkle. It looks dry and crisp, and it is. It was been made by the award winning wine making team at Punt Road using Champagne yeasts. It is the perfect cider for a hot summers day. I found it very refreshing.

Pear Cider

A real revelation, I grew up with Pear cider being called Perry. Traditionally, perry was always at least semi-sweet, usually sweet. This is again, very pale in colour and and a low 4.5% alcohol. Pears are full of malic acid, that is the crisp acid found in Granny Smiths apples, this leads to a crisp acidic wine with hints of citrus flavours. This cider is delicious, unfortuately, only 800 cases have been made. Be quick!

Now, a great food match, sushi and sashimi. The light delicate flavours of these Japanesse dishes was the absolutely perfect match for the crisp light flavours of these ciders.

Sushi and cider, it works.

Both ciders come in 4-packs and rrp is $18.00.

To find out where to by these beauties click on the winery link above. Be quick!

How do they score out of 10.

Punt Road Apple Cider - 8.5 apples.

Punt Road Pear Cider - 9 pears.

Check out my wine blog at: http://freerunwineevents.blogspot.com/