Chris Shanahan » Cider

Cider and beer review — Napoleone & Co and Coopers

Chris Shanahan — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:51:04 +0000

Napoleone & Co Yarra Valley Apple Cider 330ml 4-pack $18
This is made at the Punt Road Winery using a variety of apples from the nearby Napoleone orchard, established in 1948. It’s pale coloured with a light, clean and fresh appley aroma. The palate’s fresh, clean and dry, with pure apple flavour, though lacking punch and vibrancy.

Coopers Original Pale Ale 375ml 6-pack $14.99
Stupidly, got caught up arguing Coopers Pale Ale versus Coopers Sparkling Ale, both bottle conditioned, the former 4.5 per cent alcohol, the latter 5.8 per cent. Like all faith arguments (Macintosh versus PC, for example) it went nowhere. Thank god, though, for the delicious, bitter, refreshing Pale Ale, what a winner.

Beer an cider review — Warsteiner and Henry Westons

Chris Shanahan — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:40:11 +0000

Warsteiner Premium Verum 330ml $4.90
This is a very attractive, easy-drinking pilsner style from Warstein, near Dortmund, Germany. Its bright, pale-lemon colour, abundant head and herbal hoppy aroma invite a big swig; then one mouthful invites another. This is delicious stuff: zingy, fresh and bracingly, bitterly dry – perfect for a hot Australian summer.

Henry Westons Special Reserve Vintage 2008 Cider 500ml $7.50
This vintage, oak-matured cider comes from Herefordshire, England. It’s a medium golden colour and heroically alcoholic at 8.2 per cent. It’s full flavoured and fresh, not in the tangy granny smith style – but more along the lines of fully ripe apples just before they slip into decay.

Cider on the move

Chris Shanahan — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:16:27 +0000

Am I imagining it, or has there been an increase in cider drinking? If there is, it’d fit with our decade long rush into premium beers of all styles.

Certainly there’s a reasonable range of ciders now being imported from the classic cider-producing areas of south-western England and Normandy, France – not that you’ll find them in every liquor store, though.

Last year at 1st Choice, Phillip, I discovered the joys of Norman pear cider in a bottle of Le Pere Jules Poire de St Desir-de-Lisieux (Leon Desfrieches). Close your eyes and think, not of England, but of Normandy, just across the channel. This is fruit country. And what better way to preserve fruit than by making eau-de-vie or cider.

Calvados and poire William – Normandy’s classic apple and pear brandies – offer, just like the region’s other fruit eau-de-vies, a teasing impression, or spirit, of the fruit that made them. But cider provides a more direct connection to the fruit flavour, and a drink more suited to our hot summer. Pere Jules was as delicate, fresh and crisp as a just-ripe, just-picked pear, and offered a similar balance of sweet-fruit and tart acid, at just four per cent alcohol.

At last we know where to find more of the same. Watch this column.