After seeing some confusion over the Westons Conquest Scrumpy currently on sale at the Wetherspoons international real-ale festival I thought it might be worth asking What is Scrumpy?
Opinions seem to vary widely as to the meaning of Scrumpy as much as to like or dislike the term. For me the idea of scrumpy is simply that’s it’s an ordinary west-country style cider that isn’t guaranteed to have been made with vintage cider making apples, but with whatever apples can be ’scrumped’ ie begged borrowed or picked up from off the ground where somebody obviously doesn’t want them themselves. It doesn’t have to be the strongest, and it doesn’t have to be cloudy or hazy but it should be authentic farmhouse style cider made from apple juice and not manufactured from concentrate.
Another attempt to explain Scrumpy:
Scrumpy is cider from apples that have been scrimped, scrumped or stolen. To some this is a derogatory term for inferior ciders compared with the premium craft ciders produced by small and medium sized cider makers. A cider named Scrumpy suggests an unfiltered cider, strong in alcohol and with a yeast sediment. Scrumpy is usually sold in flaggons or containers larger than a single bottle.
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.
Gwynt y Ddraig make Welsh cider and perry in a traditional craft quality style but they started scaling up their production dramatically recently. Last year they supplied the Brains brewery owned pubs in the Cardiff and South Wales areas and now they are to supply J D Wetherspoon. So that’s good news for Wetherspoons customers in whichever outlets they can find it.
Sales of Gwynt y Ddraig already increased by a massive 196% in a year when Magners Irish Cider have been blaming the weather for reduced demand for their mass-marketed ‘over ice’ product.
Welsh breathing fire into cider market – Morning Advertiser
JDW will begin stocking cider from Wales’ biggest producer Gwynt y Ddraig – which just announced a three-fold increase in sales – at its Welsh outlets this week.
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