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Cider Digest #0471
Subject: Cider Digest #471 Wed Sep 14 18:00:18 EDT 1994
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 94 18:00:19 -0400
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Cider Digest #471 Wed Sep 14 18:00:18 EDT 1994
Forum for Discussion of Cider Issues
Jay Hersh, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
ten days in Somerset (Dick Dunn)
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Date: 14 Sep 94 13:58:16 MDT (Wed)
From: rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn)
Subject: ten days in Somerset
We just got back from a vacation in England, centered around Somerset--a
county in the southwest. We hadn't realized it before going, but it's
very much the center of apple-growing and cider-making. So although we'd
planned that the fermented-beverage-exploration side of our trip would
include beers and a search for mead, we decided to explore ciders as well.
At the risk of boring readers who already know well what I'm going to
babble on about...
The first cider-maker we visited offered tastes of a couple of dry ciders.
One taste and:
Oh!
So THAT's what cider is all about! What a revelation. Forget the fizzy
apple juice with alcohol; the best of any commercial cider I'd ever had
bore as much relation to this cider as a wine cooler does to a good Cab or
Merlot. This Somerset cider was refreshing, but it had a complex character
that made it interesting to drink--different aspects of apple taste, oak
from the aging, tannin that gave it a backbone, and so on. Moreover, it
was obvious from the very first taste just what they were trying to do with
their style of cider. I don't quite have a word for it--"adult" sounds
a bit silly; "austere" seems harsh--but what I mean is that it lacks the
"soda pop" immediate-gratification-and-then-its-over aspect. On the first
taste if you're expecting fresh apple fruit, it brushes you back...but then
it invites you to have more and find all the odd little corners and nuances
in the flavor. It is also a great companion to food, including strongly
spiced dishes, because it has enough character to stand up to them.
We spent some time talking to several cider-makers. It always came back to
the choice of apples: The right apples make the cider. Yeast didn't seem
to matter; it could be natural yeast or helped along with an added wine
yeast to get fermentation going quickly and prevent contamination. The
barrels could be of various origins (they weren't using new barrels), it
might not even be aged in a barrel. But they all insisted on the proper
choice of apples, choosing several varieties to draw tannin from one,
sharpness from another, sugar from a third, and a mix of tastes from all.
They all insisted that "dessert apples" (those normally used for eating or
cooking) weren't fit for cider making. One of the issues is that if
you're making a dry cider, too much acid (as in a good pie apple, say)
will leave you with a too-sour result once there's no sugar to balance the
tartness.
We tasted a couple varieties of their cider apples, and they really are a
breed apart...one in particular (don't know the name, sorry) was so bitter,
un-sweet and un-tart, and pithy, that you'd have to be both very hungry and
obstinate to eat more than a bite. But you could tell from the taste what
it would contribute to a cider.
Most of the cider we had was almost a year old, i.e., made from the '93
fall harvest. We tasted one that was four years old (and still in cask).
It was interesting for reference of what happens with age, but it was on
its way out. Also, all but one were still. The one carbonated cider was
finished in the bottle (i.e., "methode champenoise") and came across as a
high-quality sparkling wine with cider character. I'm sure bad cider does
exist, but we didn't encounter any.
Lastly, it's *cheap*. Typical pub price for "farmhouse cider" ranged
55-70p for a half-pint. (US translation: $.90-1.15 for 10-oz glass.)
I remember one particular bulk purchase from a cider-maker where we'd
brought a plastic jug to fill up..."Let's see, is that the four? No, it's
the five-litre...that'll be four quid then." Five liters is about 1.3 US
gallons, and four quid [pounds] is about US $6.50...in other words, a
standard wine-bottle's worth of cider was about $1, in a country where
food and drink tend to be a bit expensive. I whimpered to myself at the
realization that I was buying excellent cider at a price barely more than
I'd pay for good apple juice at home...and (mostly) at the realization that
there wasn't going to be any more of this sort of cider after the vacation
was over. We ended up drinking an average of about a liter and a half of
cider per day between the two of us. (Don't call us pikers until you
consider that we had to drink some beer as well.:-)
If you get a chance to visit the southwest of England, it's well worth
your while to seek out the local ciders. In a pub, ask the bartender about
local dry "farmhouse" cider or scrumpy (scrumpy being at the strong end,
perhaps 8% alc v/v, compared to 6% or so for most of the rest). They're
likely to caution you that it's very dry, and maybe suggest you'd prefer a
major-brand cider instead. Persevere; try the local stuff.
(Finally, the problem: Now that I've got this new addiction to a style of
cider I'd never imagined before, how do I feed it?)
- ---
Dick Dunn rcd@eklektix.com -or- raven!rcd Boulder, Colorado USA
...Simpler is better.
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End of Cider Digest
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