Beer drinkers take to cider

Beer, Cider

Watch out beer, is cider stealing your fans?  In March 2010 AC Nielsen reported cider as the “fastest growing liquor category in 2009” with the value of sales jumping by 37.2 per cent in the December 2009 quarter alone.

Cider’s growth continued in 2010 and in the cool summer of 2010–11 may have stolen sales from beer. Both Foster’s and Coca Cola Amatil’s brewing arms recently attributed slow sales to the cool summer.

But in an interview for the Adelaide Advertiser, Coopers Brewery chairman, Glen Cooper, said his company was trying to assess whether cider is “robbing from beer 100 per cent or is it robbing from wine or alcopops”.

Then in the same article cider maker Steve Dorman said he believed cider growth came from beer drinkers having “a cider as a spacer”.

Whatever the truth, there’s no denying the increase in numbers of ciders on retail shelves and on tap in bars.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011

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