Two pubs in Liverpool were added recently to the cider wiki pub guide , bringing the the total listed up to 900 for the first time.
How accurate is the count?
Pretty accurate I’d say. There will be some discrepancies around the counties, like whether or not offlicences and shops are listed, or those pubs which have been revisited and found no longer to stock real cider (delisted) but with a few people keeping an eye on recent changes and doing the occasion partial recount, I’d guess the figure is accurate within + or – 25
What’s the growth rate?
The 800 mark was reached on December 24th last year so that’s a net increase of 12.5% in under 6 months. Although there no doubt remain areas of the country with some good cider pubs yet to be documented, it’s obviously a finite number and the growth rate is naturally slowing down. I would nevertheless expect the magic number of 1,000 to be reached sometime during 2008.
What are the trends in cider outlets?
To a large extent the state of the wiki pub guide is a reflection of the activity of the community of contributors without which it would eventually become outdated and irrelevent, so it’s a healthy sign that pubs which have been closed down or changed hands with the new owners having no commitment to real cider are being delisted by disappointed visitors There is also a trend for publicans who have taken steps to obtain cider or put on a cider festival making their own edits to add their premises onto the wiki. A worrying trend is that of some Wetherspoons managers to cease bothering with the Westons bag-in-boxes or Sheppey’s bottles. This leaves the choice in such outlets limited to Westons inferior bottled products, the ubiquitous magners and swedish alcopop flavoured ‘cider’, a far cry from the range originally introduced in the summer of 2006.
On a small scale, cider-by-rosie has shown the potential for local craft cider outlets, selling well where it has been introduced in Dorset. In trems of demand, there’s no practical reason why hundreds of similar operations could not be supplying diverse and enjoyable real juice local cider to thousands of pubs up and down the country.
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