Bars & Pubs

Barrels of apple-derived fun

Kent is represented by Biddenden Draught Extra Dry (8 per cent). Kent cider-makers use dessert and cooking apples rather than cider apples and the product is more wine-like than Herefordshire or Somerset cider. Alongside dryness, Biddenden Draught offers hints of the sea and a slightly sour apple flavour. The cidery’s Biddenden Sweet is phenomenally strong at 8.4 per cent, but so easy to drink you wouldn’t notice until it was too late.

Consequently you shouldn’t rush at cider. ‘That’s why we sell it by the half glass or the two-pint jug,’ Morroun explains, ‘to encourage people to sip or share. We did sell it by the pint, but we had people falling over.’

Sadly, the number of cider apple orchards in England is decreasing by the year as they go the way of the English eating apples and are grubbed up to be replaced by cereal crops. Millions of tons of eating apples are imported by the supermarkets every year, yet England has the natural ability to meet this demand and meet it with apples that have flavour and bite rather than the sugary pap we import from France and America. Tragically it looks too late to save the indigenous eating apple industry and the British public needs to sip and share much more if we wish to guarantee quality cider in the future. Feature continues

In Suffolk, Barry Chevallier of Aspalls makes a famous dry and sparkling cider first brought from Normandy to England by Clement Chevallier in 1728. Chevallier sees himself as an ecowarrior with a mission to save England’s orchards. ‘We’ve helped keep orchards in existence here in East Anglia by helping local fruit growers to convert to organic rather than grub up their orchards. This has enabled us to keep both our organic cider and our organic cider vinegar made only from English apples in production.’

Aspalls is one of the larger independent producers and has the ability to keep thousands of acres of orchard under production, but smaller farmhouse operations have a role to play as well. Often family-run and making cider amid the orchards, they keep English cider making alive and produce drinks with flavours unique to their area. Some are only a few miles from London. In Kent, Badgers Hill Farm and Cidery makes its own cider in the barrel, while Pawley Farm near Faversham uses a 200-year-old family recipe. Oak flasks are employed to ferment the cider which is left to mature for 18 months.

Committed to stopping the disappearance of our apple orchards and doing things the traditional way, processes like these produce drinks that are redolent of their area and pack a special punch. The French would call it terroir, here it’s just terrific. Either way you wouldn’t really want to put ice in a drink this good.

'Ice!’ says Chevallier. ‘Our whole cider making process is about keeping water out of our cider!’

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