Archive for March, 2008

Wetherspoons International Festival

Published at March 29, 2008 in wetherspoon and camra. 3 Comments

Wetherspoons international real-ale festival

J D Wetherspoon, the big national pub chain is advertising it’s international real ale festival from 27th March - 14th April with “Imported beers and ciders” but inside the situation is extremely disappointing:

The only real cider is Weston’s Conquest Scrumpy and in my local ’spoon the ‘festival’ Conquest box is simply replacing the space normally occupied by Weston’s Old Rosie. Conquest is a pleasant enough drink, which some may know as ‘Bounds Brand’ but the regular Old Rosie drinkers felt it to be a weak substitute at 4.8% instead of 7.3%, with similarly diluted flavour profile when you can actually taste the water in it.

But the really bad news is the featured imported cider for the festival. Is it Breton, Welsh or Basque? From Normandy, Asturias or Canada?

No it’s the usual colourful fruity alcopops from Scandinavia with a slight variation:

Kopperberg Cherry - made with fresh water from Sweden, fermented apples with the added taste of cherry.

For the International beer and cider festival J D Wetherspoons has teamed up with CAMRA, the former consumer organisation, now working in conjunction with the retail industry to promote fruit flavoured alcopops passed off as cider.

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Olivers Perry in the Guardian

Published at March 27, 2008 in perry, olivers and products. 0 Comments

The things food and drink writers say…

Around Britain with a fork | Experts | Life and Health
Oliver isn’t a scientific blender, he says. “I just use my nose and palate, and I try to end up with something that I know is going to work. I don’t try to produce something that’s going to take someones head off.”

And, sure enough, my head isn’t blown off by a glass of his Three Counties medium-dry perry, but I am blown away by it, by its quiet, off-dry elegance, the suavity of its fruit, as debonair as a Savile Row suit, with a long, long finish.

Perry is a wonderful drink which should be celebrated much more than at present, and Olivers is exemplary of the craft genre. Too much perry in one session however, should be avoided not because of the danger of getting your head blown off exactly, but for reasons which involve other bodily systems such as the digestive and perambulatory parts.

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Harechurch Hill cider

Published at March 24, 2008 in bottled cider. 0 Comments

Harechurch Hill cider 2352618916_977f9b37e1_m

This is simply one of the best bottled ciders ever, and I’ve reached that conclusion on more than one occasion at the Dartmouth Arms where they have a pretty good selection of cider and perry. I think I’ll add it to the best of the bottles page on the cider wiki.

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Book: Manmade Eden - Historic Orchards in Somerset and Gloucestershire

Published at March 23, 2008 in Gloucestershire, Somerset, books and orchards. 0 Comments

Author James Russell contacted me about research for a new book about cider. A previous book called “Manmade Eden - Historic Orchards in Somerset and Gloucestershire” is well worth a mention at this point. It features interviews with John Thatcher and Julian Temperley, lots of great pictures and material on the history of cider that I think readers would enjoy.

Manmade Eden is published by Redcliffe Press ( available by mail order) or through the Amazon ukcider bookstore ( out of stock last time I looked )


Manmade Eden: Historic Orchards in Somerset and GloucestershireBook: Manmade Eden - Historic Orchards in Somerset and Gloucestershire

The blurb says:

The West Country is famed for its orchards, but why are they here? As the campaign to save and celebrate English orchards gathers momentum, this book explores their fascinating and - until now - neglected history. Why is Glastonbury known as Avalon, the Isle of Apples? What made Redstreak Cyder the most popular drink of the seventeenth century? Who was Dr Ashmead, cultivator of the connoisseur’s favourite apple, Ashmead’s Kernel? How did a Somerset vicar come to make cider for Queen Victoria? This rich, wide-ranging book takes a long historic look at changing fashions and fortunes - asking why thirteenth-century monks and Edwardian landowners planted orchards, and why post-war governments paid farmers to destroy them. The author argues that Apple Day (October 21) should be made our national autumn holiday. He examines the role of Common Ground, the National Trust and other organisations in preserving and restoring orchards, and asks: what can we do to make our orchards as profitable as they were in centuries past?

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The traditional Basque cider meal

Published at March 17, 2008 in food, sidreria and basque cider. 1 Comment

Following my last video post about pouring the cider from the barrel in the Hondarribia Sidreria, this one is about the traditional meal that goes with it. It’s pretty much the same as offered at nearly all of the Basque sidrerias or sagardotegi. The furniture is usually long heavy wooden tables with benches, set amongst or near to the enormous cider barrels so that you can get up and help yourself to a small glass of wonderful fresh cider poured from a great height as often as you like. If there is a short queue of people replenishing their glasses from the same stream in turn then so much the better.

At the Sidreria in Hondarribia, the standard cider meal in March 2008 cost 24 euros with unlimited cider, or there is slight variation for the gastonomique menu at 28 euros and some a la carte options as well.

The traditional cider meal consisted of:

* cider

1) Bacalau omlette. Bacalau is salt cod, but it’s not as overpoweringly fishy as the Portuguese version which I feared, in fact quite tasty with lots of onions.

* cider

2) Bacalau with peppers. This is almost like fresh cod and the Basque peppers are always special, they have several denomination controlees for the peppers.

* cider

3) The T bone steak. Enormous and rare, cut into chunks with one steak serving two people as plenty.

Sidreria in Hondarribia

* cider

There’s baguette to mop up the juices but by this time you will have noticed that a lot of protein has been served with hardly any vegetables. So the desert is

* cider

4) Cheese. Special sheeps cheese, not Manchego but Idiazábal A smoked unpasteurized sheep’s milk cheese aged 8 months with a strong but subtle flavour from being smoked with hawthorn and cherry wood. Served with quince “cheese” ( a kind of thick fruit paste) and whole walnuts to crack. We were given a nutcracker but apparently some people like to use the traditional method which is to smash the nuts against the table with your bare hands.

* cider

5) coffee

* cider

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Alcohol duty rates 2008 budget

Published at March 13, 2008 in duty. 0 Comments


from www.hmrc.gov.uk/budget2008/bn91.pdf

Alcohol duty rates 2008 budget
Alcohol duty rates 2008 budget

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Cider duty increases expected in budget

Published at March 9, 2008 in duty and campaign. 0 Comments

All three main UK political parties are falling over each to be seen as coming down hard on binge drinkers after the failure of 24hour pub opening to introduce a new continental cafe style drinking culture. Coinciding with a slowdown in the economy and an expected fall in tax revenues, this can only mean one thing for alcohol duties, they’re going up.

Alcopops, cheap white ‘cider’ and strong beers have been singled out for criticism, but spirits and wine duties are expected to rise also.

At present, cider holds a special place in the customs and excise duty regulations. Already lower than other alcohol duties, duties on spirits, sparkling wine and cider have been frozen for at least the last two years.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/budget2006/bn55.htm

The rate for beer is calculated on a percentage alcohol basis at £13.26 per hectolitre per cent of alcohol in the beer so a 5% lager would attract duty at £66.30 per hectolitre

The duty on still cider and perry however is levied at a fixed rate of £25.61 per hectolitre up to 7.5% abv, with only a slight increase to £38.43 for 8.5% ( above this strength it counts as apple wine)

So the duty on a mass produced white cider at 7.5% is currently only around a quarter of that on beer of a weaker strength. Wine and spirits are taxed at a higher rate again.

What are the implications for high quality, 100% juice, craft ciders? At present these have the same alcohol duty advantage as the mass produced industrial imposters, so if the duty rates for cider are increased anywhere towards parity with beer, then the cost of retailing craft ciders will have to go up as well, at least for all except the smallest producers who make only 7,000 hectolitres per year or less.

Those are the facts, but these are some of the questions arising:

1) Why is cider taxed less than beer?

2) How can they get away with calling something fermented from less than 30% apple juice “cider” ?

3) Will increased taxation reduce binge drinking?

4) Will it hit craft cider producers worse than cheap white ‘cider; manufacturers?

5) Is this why NACM tried to squash the campaign to defend the small cidermakers exemption? To what end?

And more importantly, here are some possible actions to be urgently adopted:

* Step up the campaign to defend the small cidermakers exemption - the petition currently has 1,400 signatures and is due to be presented to the prime minister in May.

* Build the ukcider Campaign for Real Cider and Perry - only an independent campaign can represent the interests of the real cider producers and drinkers.

* Expose the deceptive NACM definition of cider which allows for less than 30% juice with the unlimited addition of water and sugar before fermentation.

* Support sensible drinking awareness - http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/

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