Additional fruits, flavours and spices
The category or style of flavoured ciders is a contentious one and now accounts for a third of all the cider consumed in the UK. There are a number of flavoured ciders available in the UK market that do not represent the best of cider. But that doesn’t mean that all flavoured ciders should be tarred with the same brush. History shows us that other natural flavourings have been added to cider for centuries. Today, there are many excellent exponents of ciders made with the addition of fruits, hops, herbs and spices. In this guide Gabe helps us navigate flavoured ciders.
There have been three great battlegrounds for cider over the course of the last 25 years or so. The first has pertained to juice content, with the fact that until 11 years, there was no quantity of apple juice legally required in order for a drink to be labelled or taxed as a cider. That was a food quality standards issue of USA chlorinated chicken proportions. Thankfully a minimum standard was set in 2010, but at only 35%, it is still pretty minimum.
Secondly, the great championing by CAMRA over the last four decades for Real ciders only being able to be presented ‘live’ to the consumer without any form of stabilisation beyond natural conditioning. It was always understandable that CAMRA would wish to this, to uphold the oldest of traditions and to align with the Real Ale definition, but not all makers endorsed this prescriptive ideology. However, reflecting the major changes in the drinks landscape over the decades, CAMRA has recently launched a new definition of what constitutes Real Cider & Perry which states:
CAMRA defines real Cider or Perry as being fermented from the whole juice of fresh pressed apples or pears, without the use of concentrated or chaptalised juices
This removes the stipulation for Real Cider having to be live, although pointers to best practice still encourage ‘live’ ciders, as well as those being dry and with natural carbonation.
“The final battleground is that of flavoured ciders – whereby cider has the addition of adjuncts that communicate colour, flavour and aroma.”
The final battleground is that of flavoured ciders – whereby cider (assume cider includes perry too) has the addition of adjuncts that communicate colour, flavour and aroma. The concept of flavoured ciders barely registered in the drinks world in the mid 1990s – it was all White Lightning, lager, lager, lager and alcopops. The alcopop boom ended with higher rates of taxation, but the interest in sweet, easy going, fun drinks was rekindled via ‘The Magner’s Effect’ in 2006.
The desire for this kind of drink coincided with the emergence into the UK market of Scandinavian Fruit ciders – low of juice content, high of sugar and aroma, and with flavours such as Strawberry and Lime and Mixed Berries. These Scandinavian, and the subsequent slew of UK produced, flavoured cider have proved to be hit, such that in the period from 2007 to 2017, they increased their proportion of total cider volume sold in the UK from 3% to 27%. Wowzers.
CAMRA’s APPLE Committee (as it was then), many CAMRA members and general cider afficionados regaled against not only the concept of flavoured cider, but also their artificiality and low juice levels. This was compounded by the fact that, technically, for duty purposes, these are not ciders, but classified as Made Wines.
However, such was the level of request for Flavoured Ciders at CAMRA festivals by punters, that it actually prompted the proposal of a motion at the 2015 CAMRA AGM to allow additional flavours into Real Cider, like fruits and herbs could be allowed to be added to Real Ale. Much to the chagrin of many CAMRA cider stalwarts, who had campaigned for decades to champion the multitudes of flavours and expression that can be achieved through apple variety, fermentation and maturation, the proposal was passed.
Under the new definition of Real Cider & Perry it states: These fruit or flavoured ciders and perry constitute a separate category or style of cider and perry based drinks within our definition.
So, it’s fair to say that Flavoured Ciders are here to stay. For many of you, that simple concept may seem like a travesty, but let me try and convince you otherwise for I am far from anti-flavoured cider, but I am anti-rubbish cider. And let’s be fair, many of those flavoured ciders easily available in the UK are just a bit rubbish. These drinks are effectively alcopops by any other name, entirely devoid of fermented characters, demonstrate the hyper-addition of aromas way beyond their representation in nature and contain enough sugar to sink a battleship.
No, the fundamental challenge with flavoured cider is that they so often just all get lumped in together. The equivalent would be pulling all ‘apple’ cider together, from Diamond White to Dorset Nectar – not a particularly helpful or insightful practice. They are completely different products, created by different type of producers with different scales of economies, ideologies and target consumers. The same attitude and approach can, and I think should, be made towards flavoured ciders.
From an ideological point of view, if a well made, interesting cider has the carefully considered addition of another high quality ingredient to create a well balanced and integrated drink, then I am all for it. The additions of pinot noir skins, hops, honey, elderflowers, nettles, blackberries to cider have made some of the most interesting, and downright tasty, ciders of the last five years.
“And let’s be fair, many of those flavoured ciders easily available in the UK are just a bit rubbish. These drinks are effectively alcopops by any other name…”
Some rally against flavoured ciders with the maxim of ‘cider doesn’t need anything added to it’. Of course, you don’t need to add elderflowers to a cider in order for it to be a superior product. But neither do you need to add wheat or raspberries to a beer to make it ‘better’, but you can, and this has been done for a little while. It’s about playfulness, experimentation, reaching new drinkers – all important actions in a modern world.
And the ‘it was never done in the past argument’ is a falsehood, because just about EVERYTHING has been done before. From Ralph Austen’s 1657 A Treatise of Fruit Trees we learn that cherry juice was added to cider. Whilst from John Worlidge’s 1678 Vinetum Britannicum, it states addition of the juice of many berries is advocated: currants, raspberries, mulberries, blackberries, and elderberries.
I’ve had a number of smaller cider makers tell me ‘off the record’ about their enjoyable and playful experiments with adding fruit, flowers, herbs, hops, spices and honey. These ciders generally don’t see the light of day, however, for want of not being lambasted by their peers, but more pertinently because of the punitive duty implications of making a cider classed as a Made Wine. With all alcohol duty regulations being reviewed currently, it may well be the case that flavoured ciders receive the same duty rate as cider, and with that one might expect even greater numbers of products in the marketplace.
My approach, therefore, which I would naturally encourage you to follow, is to not judge every cider by its cover. Taste it, learn more about it (not always easy, granted) and come to an informed conclusion as to whether you think it helps the reputation of cider and whether you just fundamentally like it or not!
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