There’s more to cider than just apples

I love beer.

You can read that again if you like. I’ll wait.

I love beer.

This is not to say that I don’t like/accept/appreciate the many other beverages on offer but simply to say that beer, well, does it for me. Its taste is pleasing to my palate, the stories and history behind beer sate my thirst for knowledge and its cultural bonds of shared experience feeds my soul. It has also, it must be said, provided me with a small income and for that my family thanks it.

I am acutely aware of ‘other’ drinks out there in the big wide marketplace which either share space with, or fight for supremacy over my beloved malted brew. I don’t dislike wine but I am equally not enamoured with its ancient charms. I used to drink a bit of *insert your favourite dark liquor here* even before they kindly put it in a pre-mixed form for my convenience but I rarely revisit that corner of my youthful exuberance. For that, my liver thanks me.

And then there’s cider.

I remember cider. “Sweet, Dry or Draught?” my TV used to enquire of me. “Sweet Dry or Draught!?” I’d answer. “Draught is a kind of horse that pulls a cart full of beer. I don’t know what ‘dry’ means for a ‘liquid’ and sweet sounds like something designed for girls or for that bloke in primary school who we all suspected would one day become a hairdresser. {Note to self; remember to book appointment with Colin this week.}

Cider was always an ‘alternative’ for our group and the wider circle of youth we’d meet up and party with. The girls who didn’t like wine would drink it, as would the girls who didn’t want to be seen drinking ‘hard liquor’. It didn’t sing to us of apples and hand-craftedness nor did it speak of aspiration or achievement – it was just kind of ‘there’ and meant for others, not us. Advertisements featuring dominant but approachable females making bottles explode were funny but didn’t hit the mark and before we knew it cider was swept away in a tsunami of wine coolers, UDLs and imported beers.

All of a sudden, it seems, cider is not just back, but back with a bang as shelf after shelf of new arrivals fills the aisles at the big liquor retailers. Not just any old cider, either. Not simply three or four brands of the same style of alcoholic apple juice produced (or procured) by the major players or importers. There are French styles, West Country Coid-arr, Irish ciders, crushed and Scrumpy or flavoured with other fruit. Don’t even get me started on Perry.

So where did cider come from, seemingly all of a sudden, where is it going and who is it taking with it? More importantly, why is taking the place of many of my well-loved imported and local craft beers in my local bottle-oh?

I decided I needed to go to a source to find out more about cider and uncover just what its wicked plans for world domination entail. Wish me luck.