Category Archives: Cider

Kendell’s estate-grown cider from Orange

18 May 2011Cider, PeopleChris Shanahan

The rapidly growing cider market includes a proliferation of niche brands and an increased demand for products made from fresh apples and pears – not juice and sugar.

At nearby Orange, Gail and James Kendell, adopted a winery-like approach, growing and making all of their product on site.

James Kendell says they’ve planted a wide range of English heritage cider apple varieties, including Kingston Blacks. The special varieties, he says, produce better cider than eating varieties partly because of their distinctive flavours but also because they contain skin tannins and high natural acidity – important components in cider’s flavour and structure.

The diversity, he says, allows him to produce a range of ciders (see www.smallacrescyder.com.au) based on traditional English styles. The still Somerset style reviewed today, for example, combines 13 apple varieties in the full and delicious west-country style.

Beer and cider review — Small Acres, Daleside and Westons,

18 May 2011Beer review, CiderChris Shanahan

Small Acres Somerset Still Cyder (Orange, New South Wales) 750ml $16
This delicious cider comes from Gail and James Kendall’s property at Orange. James says they grow traditional English heritage cider varieties on the property and make the cider on site from fresh-picked apples. Somerset Still, says James, approximates England’s west country style. It’s made from 13 different varieties, pulped, pressed through cloth into stainless steel vats and fermented dry using an aromatic white wine yeast. The result is just lovely – a still, earthy, slightly grippy cider, unquestionably made from apples, and finishing with fresh, natural acidity.

Daleside Old Leg Over Yorkshire Beer 500ml $8.20
Gentle sweet fruity, malt aroma leads the away into Daleside – flavours that continue on the lively, rich, balanced palate. A touch of malted wheat injects its own briskness, independent of the hops bitterness and bite that that subtly finish off this delicious, one-more-glass Yorkshire ale.

Westons Premium Organic Pear Cider 500ml $7.60
The cliché-riddled website reveals little about cider growing or making. The cider, however, is wet and refreshing – not as crystal clear in its peariness, nor as delicate, as the best Norman versions across the Channel, but solid, rich, refreshingly low on gas and finishing with keen, tart acidity.

Gundaroo’s crunchy cider

27 April 2011CiderChris Shanahan

If you find the popular apple ciders on tap in bars too sweet, a couple of outlets around town offer the zippier, drier Jolly Miller – made at Gundaroo by Ron Miller.

Miller’s cider making started as a retirement hobby but quickly became a very busy business. He now struggles to meet demand for kegs at Zierholz (Fyshwick), Phoenix (Civic) and at the Wine Bar and Grazing Restaurant in Gundaroo.

Seeking a take-away package, Miller ruled out bottles as impracticable on a small scale. Instead, he opted for five-litre kegs, due for release this week at around $50 retail.

Miller currently uses granny smiths, pink ladies and “whatever else is available”. But an experimental batch made from Kingston Blacks, a specialist cider variety, points to the future. He expects an increased supply next year from Borry Gartrell’s Borrodell orchard at Orange. From these he’ll make a new, top-shelf cider.

Beer drinkers take to cider

23 March 2011Beer, CiderChris Shanahan

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.

Cider and beer review — Napoleone & Co and Coopers

5 May 2010Beer review, CiderChris Shanahan

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

27 January 2010Beer review, CiderChris Shanahan

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

30 September 2009CiderChris Shanahan

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.